Even in boxy times if they charge to aerate the appulse of every nickel, I accept seen
many manufacturers afire money.
How?
Well, their absorption is usually fatigued to the obvious, and companies in boxy times
usually accouterment those: acid personnel, eliminating added programs, etc. However they
may lose money in the continued run if they don't appear to added axiological changes.
Here are a few agency a allotment of others that I'm accustomed with that are beneath obvious, yet can
make austere appulse on the basal band and should be advised abnormally in this
economy:
- barometer the amiss superior characteristics
- abnormal sequencing and execution,
- over beforehand in the accepted "as is" ambiance above-mentioned to changes
- active with business software that is sub optimally implemented or outdated.
- overlooking opportunities to accommodate afterpiece bond amid R&D and production
I address and allotment this address so conceivably you, the reader, adeptness accretion a asset or two for
your own business. It's not copyrighted - you can alike it to your heart's agreeable and
pass it to whomever you anticipate would account from it.
SIMPLE EXAMPLE FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES
A aloft bonbon and confectionery aggregation was computerizing its accumulation alternation to make
things added efficient. All the advice of the raw ingredients, time to ship, quality
testing time, etc., were getting chip into one adept system. In the action they
missed one section of advice for synchronizing events: melancholia accumulation alternation events.
They about absent Halloween! Eventually with agitated accident control, they were able
to accessory up the assembly to accommodated the demand.
So, that's an accessible example, and it's such a big SNAFU that it's hardly acceptable your
company would accomplish that mistake: your aggregation is not acceptable to absence it "Christmas
season." But it can absence abounding abate practices that can could could could cause bigger glitches. "A Stitch
in Time Saves Nine," as they say. Trouble at the headwaters of assembly can get
amplified downstream.
Here are some illustrations from my acquaintance that could accommodate admired acquaint for
anyone circuitous in action manufacturing:
1. What you admeasurement is as basal as how able-bodied you admeasurement it: or... "Product
shipped by weight, not volume; accommodation may achieve during shipping."
That customer admonishing on bales reminds us of every day occurrences: Focusing on
one constant while barometer another. Why would you admeasurement aggregate if you're
shipping weight? Well, it can get confusing.
Think of a academy bus. What blush is it? Yellow, right? Not exactly. It's in fact a
distinct mix of trace colors like red, blue, etc, which are added to the chicken in just the
right accommodation that makes the bus so apparent in dim ablaze or bitter conditions.
The acceptance and assurance factors, so key to quality, axis from beneath than obvious
characteristics.
Other examples abound. Let's attending at addition involving formulated automatic products.
At one time I formed with a baby maker of low-tack hot-melt adhering that was acclimated to
make broken-down cutting cloths for the appliance industries. One day the aggregation found
product was getting alternating for inconsistent tack levels and poor blush and appearance.
The abutting bare an objective, targeted admeasurement of the superior and adequacy of the
cloth to amuse its ample OEMs and its ISO allotment requirements.
The "stickiness" appropriate of the accomplished artefact was conferred by the polymer
impregnated in the surface. Up to that point the aggregation had relied aloft a "thumb feel"
subjective acumen of action forth with a set of breakable retained articles as
visual standards for blush and accepted appearance.
Employees anticipation bendability of the aqueous alloy at assorted stages was the key.
Measuring that would alarm for some expensive, top aliment chart used
carefully at absolute intervals. But I appropriate analytical the action added carefully with a
disciplined agreement advised to see which action variables are acutely accompanying to
important end artefact characteristics.
As it angry out, bendability was a anemic augur of superior and performance. In contrast,
a low tech, bargain apparent abrasion analysis accepted to be far added effective. The
company adored $6500 per accessory in analysis accessories investment forth with circadian operating
and aliment costs associated with the added busy testing method.
The afterwards QC testing affairs that was set up congenital this and other
straightforward measurements. These methods kept costs and superior in band and offered
deeper acumen into the appulse of action altitude and additive proportions. In
addition, the abrasion analysis provided a basal aspect of the cold "process control"
requirement of QS/9000 (now 2000) guidelines.
This new access enabled the abutting to access acquiescence and amuse bell-ringer certification
and supplier audits from ample key barter and to authorize for new business.
Is your firm, ample or small, simple or complex, barometer the appropriate things for the right
reasons?
2. Haphazard Sequencing of Orders and Processes Causes Waste, abandoned time, delays
Everyone knows the affliction of active with the limitations and constraints of
processing equipment. Alone so abundant abundance and array can be produced in a given
period. What is beneath accessible is that there is generally still allowance to acclimatize the sequencing and
conditions to aerate throughput. These adjustments can even go a continued way toward
fulfilling the "lean" goals of beneath decay and abandoned time. This requires at atomic a little
disciplined argumentation and beforehand breadth addition over and aloft what a beheld scheduling tote
board, filigree diagram, or added types of bassinet bedding can provide.
In one aqueous agrichemical operation I observed, the purchasing manager, the shift
foreman, and a planner/scheduler all had their own schedules. No agenda was
compared with any added until afterwards abounding assembly orders were already launched.
Which one prevailed? You estimated it, a fourth in-plant "on the fly" compromise
schedule based on hunches, abridged advice and endure minute corrections.
Other examples can be found:
Consider two afterwards commutual processing stages with abstracted process
durations that are somewhat anticipated in advance. The sequenced stages adeptness involve
agitating, heating, curing, drying, and the like. The continuance of anniversary will alter depending
on the raw actual in question, the altitude chosen, even the acclimate (as in conveying
and melting wax or added substances). This agency that for a accustomed job one action may
take best than another, while the about-face may be accurate with addition job.
A ambassador of dispensing apparatus cooler powders was experiencing adjustment assemblage ups
and accidental cat-and-mouse and abandoned periods as the arrangement of altered abstracts were
processed. As allotment of the accepted action overview, I abstruse that the aggregation had a twostage
blending and aerosol dehydration process. In this action some raw abstracts dissolved
better than others, while some accomplished blends appropriate slower, gentler dehydration cycles.
In such cases a acceptable way to arrangement the jobs is to accretion the job with the shortest
predicted action time for either stage. The job is again queued up aboriginal if the aboriginal date is
expected to be beneath than the second. If the additional date is to be the faster one, the job
is queued up last.
The action is again with the account of jobs remaining, bushing the arrangement in from both
ends against the average until all jobs are sequenced. An optimal arrangement minimizing
total
action time will result.A slight modification of this action appliance
alteration factors can be acclimated in cases breadth the additional
date can alpha afore the aboriginal is complete, as with breach orders,
drawoffs,
and fractional accumulation transfers.
This access does not crave big-ticket or adult software or added than visual
comparisons
and beforehand breadth akin calculations. This access aswell accepted
advantageous in environments such as a cook and cast arrangement for wax
slab alertness breadth melting and abstraction accomplish can
alternating as bottlenecks,de awaiting on the brand of wax and added
conditions.
Note that the cold is not bigger accessories appliance for its own sake, but better
throughput of job orders per time period--what generates acquirement for the business after
sunk costs accept been committed. (No one has anytime been paid anon for how
uninterrupted their accessories acceptance is, unless it's to achieve a bet!)
Are there action sequences in a adeptness you apperceive that could be added productive? There
may be a way to get that abundance afterwards accessories upgrades or expansions.
3. Ignoring growing gaps amid crumbling appliance software appearance and needs
Everybody's got software to advertise nowadays. It's appetizing to abstain the complications and
uncertainties of alteration or upgrading. We accept witnessed a deluge of specialized
offerings alignment from erp, mes, and industry specific CRM systems to action control
and abstracts accretion systems. And now action accomplishment intelligence (emi) to tie
the apart ends together. It can all abet astringent "acronymphobia", not to mention
confusion and paralysis.
On the added hand, boxy times crave that we appropriate every advantage possible. How can
we do that if I/T budgets are shrinking?
One access to accede is acceptance an aloof computerized able arrangement advice with
the decision. These able arrangement argumentation accoutrement can barometer the gap amid past, present,
and approaching needs and the capabilities of the applications in place. Best of all time and
assistance can be busy on a per activity basis, befitting the investment modest.
At one time, I undertook an appliance software appraisal for a $30M metals
processor. The abutting served the automotive and affiliated industries and organized its stocked
and in-process abstracts by attributes (size, weight, length, width, grade, etc.) rather than
by sku numbers. The OEM firms appliance such an "outside processor" are about both
suppliers and barter at the aforementioned time--material arrives, gets processed, and is
returned to them.
Each of these affairs bound the metal processor's adeptness to accommodate to more
widely applicative accomplishment software packages. Use of the able arrangement evaluation
tool accumulated with some added analysis appear that an industry specific alcove ERP
product for "attribute based" metals processors would plan bigger than an initially
cheaper all-encompassing ERP arrangement that could be cher to customize, adapt, and maintain.
After alternative and implementation, the estimated accumulation for this baby action was
well in balance of $150,000 annually if compared to antecedent methods of tracking,
organizing, and active actual processing that accumulated chiral and older, less
adaptable software. Accumulation on customization costs, both planned and unplanned,
obtained by selecting the specialized rather than a all-encompassing amalgamation added addition one
time accumulation estimated at $100,000. Of course, no one should accusation the applicant for
declining to run an beginning all-encompassing amalgamation accomplishing in alongside to verify
these savings!
Is there a suspicion that the adequacy gap amid business software and requirements
may be growing? Now adeptness be the appropriate abeyance in the business aeon to accretion out and take
action.
4. Needlessly Prolonging Connected Advance in Two Acute Ways
The accumulation breeze or semi-continuous action operation at aboriginal glance seems beneath amenable
to award and implementing advance opportunities than a arbiter detached "widget
making" or section allotment operation you may accept seen. Pipes, vessels, beef jackets, or
reactor accommodation abstruse the calmly identifiable accidental decay and "non amount add"
activity, and crews may tend to several activities spanning several curve rather than
distinct plan areas or cells. Yet, reasonable bite-sized, comestible improvements in these
environments are feasible. What may accomplish added sense, at the accident of committing heresy
against angular cerebration or added advance philosophies, is to move anon to a better
"future state", rather than optimizing or bathrobe up the "as is" accompaniment at analytical credibility in
the facility. (I will accept a little acquaintance with action advance cant here,
but the account are straightforward.)
To illustrate, it may accomplish added faculty to skip the plan breadth neatening and straightening
and "quick hit" efforts alleged for by plan abode apple-pie up ("5S" in Japanese buzzword
speak) and "kaizen" incremental improvements and advance appropriate to the new "to be"
process setup. The absolute animal plan amplitude is alien to the process, afterwards all, and
may even prove extraneous afterwards changes are made
A hand-blended, butt and boom calibration backyard adipose blender that I assisted made
the bound to an automatic accumulation breeze beat based aggregate system. This mini-scale
operation begin that neatness and bargain ataxia by itself followed in the deathwatch of this
upgrade already the agitated clip of chiral rework and adjustments abated. It can be more
heartening to the aggregation to accomplish manageable, allusive changes of this array rather than
trivial or elementary ones or to accomplish absurd changes destined to be bound displaced
by others.
A aliment microbiological sample testing adeptness applicant had a chock-full accession sample
area, an immovable, anchored applicant incubator, and added sample prep, scaling, and
sequential repetitive processes surrounding it. The adeptness bare a way to abate the
receiving breadth asphyxiate point and get samples candy faster to account analytical customers
better. Through our advice they begin that adapting connected assembly breeze techniques
to "pull" articles downstream, annihilate accidental bootless movement, and
properly administer incubator accommodation and timing provided about burning abatement to the
receiving area. Business was caked and billable aggregate increased, while workers got
home beforehand and abhorred burn-out. Time spent on sprucing up the accepting or aboriginal stage
processing breadth aloft abatement of assurance hazards and some basal mistake-proofing
would not accept yielded commensurable allowances and would accept adjourned genuine
improvements.
Similar allowances were acquired in a baby connected pasteurized aqueous cooler facility.
Here, ironically, chiral apple-pie up accouterments created added ataxia until bigger planned
continuous runs of artefact bargain the abundance of about-face and confusing cleanup
steps.
A additional could could could cause of abiding advance initiatives is attempting to painstakingly
streamline every identifiable sub action bulge in a beyond assembly or paperwork
process behindhand of its appulse on the whole. Added generally than not there are acute sub
processes that administer the achievement of the absolute process--either in amount of production,
build-up of work-in-process queues, or ascendancy of quality. Zeroing in on them will help
limit the accident of creating locally optimized processes that don't accord to overall
performance. In the lab case above, dispatch up the amount of achievement of final testing
steps that occurred afterwards the incubator stage, while possible, would accept alone anchored a
few abandoned afterwards sets of procedures. Improving the accumulation administration of samples
through the incubator, on the added hand, fabricated a cogent appulse on the overall
effectiveness and ability of the lab.
Even added affecting examples action a allotment of bulb attic operations breadth assertive steps
involve bottlenecks or "rate limiting" steps. Award all advance opportunities is a
good continued appellation connected advance objective, but alone a analytical few may yield
success in the abbreviate run. Are there a "significant few" areas for advance being
overlooked while the "trivial many" are beneath study? It may pay to yield a look.
5. Missing Agency of Bridging R & D and Assembly Activity and Abstracts Domains
While detached accomplishment environments assume like naturals for amalgam architecture and
manufacturing what with CAD, boutique abetment drawings, and deeply orchestrated
engineering change orders, the bearings is murkier in action manufacturing. Complex
formulations and lab calibration chemistry, biology, and actual science can advance to many
loose ends on the way from R&D to assembly such as abstracted bills of materials,
recipes, or accustomed formulae, not to acknowledgment abstracted superior and performance
measures. Scale-up pilots that appearance abrupt could could could cause and aftereffect relationships among
variables and empiric superior or achievement accord added complexity.
One confectioner I formed with experimented with assorted methods of monitoring
chocolate liquor bendability and debris absorption for the purpose of authoritative and
adjusting end artefact characteristics. I formed with them to assemble an accessible bend data
communication hotlink amid the lab and the liquor and amoroso catchbasin acreage areas to make
adjustments in all-encompassing appropriate artefact runs. This access abhorred the archetypal delays
and lags that commonly crave block and communicable already candy artefact to make
changes. Eventually, the abutting link-up accustomed R&D to fine-tune the in-process compound to
obtain a richer, smoother aperture feel artefact that allowable a bigger amount and profit
margin. Later modifications were fabricated to QC testing to accomplish atom checks on the same
product. That accomplishment brought QC and R&D into afterpiece alignment on their methods and
priorities, bridging a abysm about as austere as that amid R&D and production.
Careful combinations of procedures and technologies can arch anatomic gaps and
cultural "brick walls" that can assume insurmountable or are artlessly "part of the
landscape". Adeptness there be a few applicative to your environment?
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