Manufacturing Engagements

 

 

Since manufacturing is one of the most important operations in any value producing organisation it should be the apex of the value stream. As important as supply chain optimization Lean manufacturing is the concept that companies should aspire towards. It may sound like a trend but I believe it is an natural progression from the earliest day of manufacturing during the industrial revolution and up through Taylorism and Fords assembly line engineering.

 

"Lean manufacturing" has become the buzzword of the 1990's thanks to James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones. In their book, The Machine That Changed the World , they presented data based on a global study of the automotive industry, and coined the term "Lean Production" to represent the best practices as exemplified most closely by the Toyota motor company. However, there is still much confusion, and misunderstanding about what is, and what is not, Lean manufacturing, and where it came from.

 

Lean should be considered much more than a series of programs and/or techniques. It is a whole new way of thinking, and includes the integration of vision, culture, and strategy to serve the customer (both internal and external) with high quality, low cost and short delivery times. Lean must become a whole systems approach in order to create a new culture and operating philosophy for eliminating all non-value adding activities from order entry to receipt of payment.

 

First of all, what is Lean? The core of Lean is based on the continuous pursuit of improving the processes, a philosophy of eliminating all non-value adding activities and reducing waste within an organization. The Value adding activities are simply only those things the customer is willing to pay for, everything else is waste, and should be eliminated, simplified, reduced, or integrated. Wastes are usually grouped into the following eight categories: overproduction, motion, inventory, defects, waiting, transportation, extra processing, and underutilized people.

 

A term closely associated with Lean is the Japanese word " Kaizen " meaning Continuous Improvement. Kaizen is a methodology focusing on continuously improving the process. Some of the main objectives of Kaizen are to reduce waste, improve quality, reduce delivery time, assure a safer work area and increase customer satisfaction.

 

The essence of lean manufacturing is to compress the time from the receipt of a customer order all the way through to receipt of payment. The results of this time compression are increased productivity, increased throughput, reduced costs, improved quality and increased customer satisfaction.

 

Taiichi Ohno devised 7 categories which cover virtually all of the means by which manufacturing organisations waste or lose money; these have become known as “The 7 wastes”.

 

Waste is the use of resources over and above what is actually required to produce the product as defined by the customer. If the customer does not need it or will not pay for it then it is waste, this includes material, machines and labour. The Japanese word for waste is “muda” and is often used in books, training courses and by lean consultants to mean waste.

 

The 7 wastes described by Ohno are:

 

1. Overproduction and early production producing over customer orders, producing unordered materials / goods.
2. Waiting hanging around, idle time (time when no value is added to the product) .
3. Transportation handling more than once, delays in moving materials, unnecessary moving or handling .
4. Inventory - unnecessary raw materials in stores, work in process (WIP), & finished stocks .
5. Motion - movement of equipment or people that add no value to the product
6. Over-processing - unnecessary processing or procedures (work carried out on the product which adds no value) .
7. Defective units producing or reworking scrap.

 

Others have included additional categories which include;

 

1. Untapped human potential
2. Inappropriate systems
3. Energy and water
4. Pollution

 

 

LMI Measurement systems manufacturer	Consolidated financial statements; either creating reports through the ODBC driver to create links or rolling up to another virtual company to create locations and departments for the Business unit reporting or creating forms that are populated with fields in the tables that reflect the current state of the information Creating a form that contains all the data relevant to the current state of information with respect to ongoing projects (Jobs). i.e. Detroit has projects for assembly and installation that take place over 14 months, there are resources used, inventory assembled, and invoicing and PO's issued with reference to that project. Electronic fund transfer in NA and Europe, especially in Europe, 60% of all payments there are EFT. AJ has the tools for this…. Algorithms for depreciation of asset accounts can be stored as code in the database repository? it says so in the tech docs. Can memorized transactions use these algorithms or can we use date triggers?  Outside implementation  form for asset records Trigger events, as in workflow tasking. Currently the submission of a request through the employee portal requires authorization but the same request inside NetSuite does not. Are there procedures that can be triggered from the application screens that will allow for this authorization? or can we do this through the creation of validation scripts (or java script) on custom forms? Internal java script Engagement Metrics; 6 months -Phase one complete
Intervention On line Enterprise management system
ASA Blinds and accessories Manufacture	Deliverables They current prepare “KITS” which I converted to “Packages”.  These groupings contained a list of products that are used for 4’ lengths and 1’ lengths.  Jobs start with 4’ lengths and every foot added uses the 1’ length package for hardware.  Then labour is added depending on the type of treatment the customer has requested We also discussed a specialized report that would help him evaluate how much  labour he is committed too.  We looked at his current item codes for labour and reviewed how we could group the different types into a line code.  (i.e. Pinch pleating, Rod pocket preparations).  Then the report would look at his current orders and calculate the units committed into hours – the first 4’ = 30 minutes and 1 minute for every added foot.  The report could be sorted by customer, then order. Engagement Metrics 4 months, 20k, did not complete, fund depletion
Intervention Custom Application for assembly desks and customer orders
SRI Modular home manufacturer	Deliverables SRI designs and manufactures mobile/modular homes as well as a wide array of wood frame packaged structures for residential housing, commercial and temporary/emergency shelter application in international markets. Integrate the production facilities and implement process improvements by delivering a custom application built around web access for the sales and operations departments. There are 3 faciclties that require supply chain connectivity and continuity. Engagement Metrics; phase one prepare the requirement and process scoping documents - complete
Intervention Custom Application for assembly of homes in multiple locations
KRW Turkey manufacturing and processing	Deliverables Analyze the organization's standard processes to determine areas where new technologies would be  most helpful. Identify helpful changes and determine the economics of those changes. Define the relationship of the identified best practices to the organization's standard process. Define the expected outcomes of the change qualitatively and quantitatively, as appropriate. Determine the need for piloting each potential change. Determine the priority of the candidate new practice changes. Document results of the analysis activities. Engagement Metrics 4 months, 40k, 4 + 3 client members, on budget
Intervention Franchise Implementation 6/94- 1/95