What is cycle time to you? A process that your inventory manager makes happen on occasion? Some arbitrary notion of a period between output from workcenter to workcenter? A concept only loosely connected to scheduling, performance, and supplier relations? If your idea of cycle time is that of a business procedure that’s only marginally important when compared to the myriad other tasks involved in manufacturing—then, you may want to rethink that thought.

Vital to positive bottomlines, cycle time reduction also reduces costs, lowers inventory levels, improves production scheduling and throughput predictability, improves customer satisfaction, and can even result in a better quality product. Indeed, if there were one operational issue you had to focus on to improve overall profits, in a world concerned with speed of manufacture that issue would be (more…)

In the age of an electronically connected global economy, where capital travels from nation to nation at the speed of light, swimming afloat in the supply stream is not always easy. It really doesn’t matter what sort of business your in, globalization of the supply chain means that if you’re not ready and in it, your business is simply and quickly passed by for one that is. Manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers—there’s no discrimination when it comes to the instant gratification of the consumer demand. With the maturity of enterprise resource planning software (ERP), the expectations are for vendors to operate lean in order to respond rapidly and with a cost-effective value.

It is certainly true that, because of ever-tightening margins, wasteful production practices are no longer tolerated. Instead, producers and providers are expected to run lean, a process of streamlining production and distribution to reduce and eliminate waste or non-value activities to the process. In a broader sense, one could extrapolate this philosophy out to the larger supply chain as well as focus it into the movement of products within the supply chain. In other words, connectivity also means that the stream of supply must flow with as few impediments as possible. At the same time, any processes that stop supply chain flow must be steady and unceasing, and processes that use inventory should always (more…)

It’s an unfortunate fact of the manufacturing life that customers are increasingly demanding lower costs for seemingly perfectly produced products, and delivered on-time—every time. And, never mind the excuses for not performing. Today, customer loyalty is often a vacuous concept and any dissatisfaction at all simply becoming a matter of clients moving along to next vendor in line who promises the desired delivery. At its root, the bane of most manufacturers is excessively long order-to-delivery cycle times, even when efforts have been made to streamline production systems.

In lean models of manufacturing, wasted time means wasted opportunities to gain efficiency. Evidence of the waste of time is everywhere in the system and often takes the form of waiting for something to happen. The shop floor waits on sales orders to get processed, machine operators wait for engineering documents to update or clear, bottlenecks form in the production line, material delivery is slowed during inventory searches, and the list of waiting maladies goes on and on. Just remember that waiting—any waiting—keeps making the order-to-delivery cycle time longer than it really needs to be. And, longer order-to-delivery cycle times nibble into valuable, and narrower, margins.

Another factor in extending the order-to-delivery cycle time, to the point of bottom-line profit erosion, is that (more…)

On-time delivery doesn’t happen on it’s own; rather, it’s the result of considerable planning, production, and accounting in the manufacturing process. As well, improved service levels means more repetitive business coming from continuously satisfied customers. In other words, predictability and repeatability allow manufacturers to more accurately forecast the economic, material, manpower, and production yields that make a company grow strong and regarded well by others in the supply-chain and the marketplace.

Planning, production, and accounting in the manufacturing process are intentional, and their validity and repeatability are paramount for prosperous growth. To the degree that these variables can be controlled, a robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) software system should be well-suited to managing such material and production variability as well accounting for raw materials and finished goods in the manufacturing process. ERP is the application in discrete manufacturing that helps make production jobs highly predictable and repeatable.

The primary reason for this is that discrete manufacturing, especially in sub-assembly and continuous assembly production, often has a (more…)

It is axiomatic that all enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are not created equal. Some are quite industry specific, while others might be application specific. Some might have very narrow capabilities, while others might be designed for generic purposes across a broad array of industries—everything from thermoform plastic pressing to the greens-keeping of sporting facilities. Furthermore, with decades of maturity behind the concept, ERP has moved beyond just being a means to facilitate discrete manufacturing, but now is used to optimize process manufacturing and various hybrid systems that blend discrete with process.

Therefore, questions invariably arise when trying to determine the ERP system best suited for the type of manufacturing operation that needs it. Normally, the functional capabilities of a discrete-oriented ERP application are inherently different than those of either a generic or process-oriented ERP application. Knowing the differences in the two can often make the difference between positive returns on the software system investment and the creation of significant risk and taxing overhead costs because of it. For example, do you know the (more…)

Remaining in play is the name of the game in manufacturing competition today. That is to say, to find the orders that keep things going, and going well, you have to be on the field with your competitors in the first place. That’s where the action is found, that’s where potential customers come to look for services, parts, and products. Through consolidation, however, the competition is changing. The days of parity, where niches were carved to pinpoint exactly what you and your competitors were all about, are becoming fewer and fewer. To remain in play in manufacturing today, a company must often introduce flexibility into their shop floor operations. Once a novel notion, flexible manufacturing is increasingly taking hold as both a practice in the shop and a philosophical approach for management.

Manufacturers no longer work in isolation from each other; rather, they usually exist as part and parcel of a large supply chain whereby the degree of success of one partner is driven by the reciprocal success of the others. Throughout the supply chain, the potential for downstream producers being flexible in their production activities means that unless you are equally dynamic you could easily lose the work as the upstream partner. This concept is more fully considered as customizability whereby operations must be (more…)

When facing competition—particularly fierce competition—it’s important to know all you can about your adversary and their weapons, the battlefield on which the fight will take place, and the best time to strike or retreat. In other words, knowledge is power, and the ability to remain flexible and fast to emerging or changing developments is a tremendous tactical advantage. This notion of changeability is at the heart of new movements in manufacturing based in production agility.

While certainly a modern business concept, agile manufacturing goes beyond simply being another version of 1980’s-styled computer integrated manufacturing or 1990’s lean manufacturing. Rather, agile manufacturing represents a complete shift in the mindset of production industries in the 21^st Century; one in which there is both a greater relationship between technology and worker skills, and greater customer access to, and demands upon, the core competencies of their manufacturers/vendors.

The basic concept of agile manufacturing is to develop what could best be called a nimble mindset when it comes to understanding market environments. In short, rapid changes in the market environment are not (more…)

Taking a simple Sunday drive down a road through the countryside, there are many things you depend upon to get you where you’re going. Most are common to all drivers. You need good tires, windows, seats, perhaps an air conditioner, and certainly a solid body. These are the essentials that in various states of repair have little bearing on the efficient functions of the car by which it sustains forward motion. However, start talking about the engine these days and you’ll get an earful regarding notions such as fuel efficiency, pollution control efficiency, maintenance efficiency, and so forth. Less common from driver to driver, car to car, are the various types and conditions of car engines, but it is the engine upon which all drivers depend the greatest to get them where they are going. As opposed to seats and seat condition, a less efficient engine simply means a less efficient car.

In this same sense, manufacturers are very dependent upon each other to be efficient in their operations—your performance is often dependent upon the performance of your upstream suppliers, while downstream your customers depend on you for their own performance levels. It is a circuitous feeding chain that traditionally has relied up on the sustaining of on-hand inventories to keep ahead of demand. With the introduction of lean manufacturing came the elimination of large inventories and the need for greater (more…)

What could be better than being just in time for somewhere you were scheduled to be or a task you had to do? That is to say, you were not too early on arrival, wasting valuable time standing around doing nothing. Nor were you too late to the task, not being able to complete on schedule that which you were asked to do.

In short, wouldn’t it be the best case scenario for you to produce the right task at precisely the right time to maximize both your time and productivity? This notion is the concept behind the philosophy of lean manufacturing referred to as “just-in-time”, or JIT production.

In JIT production, we are seeking to eliminate costs that add no value to the final product. It is certain that without critical thought applied to a manufacturing system as a whole, the potential for waste in process is heightened. These forms of waste can include (more…)

From the production of the smallest nut, to the development of massive rigging assemblies, all items and processes that go into the making of the part, piece, or assembly must be accounted for. Without this knowledge, margins are lost and profitability is a function of guesswork. In the past, the accounting of manpower, material, and machinery was the result of painstaking, though often erroneous, handwritten data in the form of charts and reports. The collection of this data would take days to complete and weeks to assess. In the age of massive batch (make-to-stock) inventory production, blunders in data tallies or the absence of complete information had only a rippling effect on what was largely the quantitative appreciation of manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution.

Today, however, with make-to-order and the job shop manufacturing environments, specialized and small batch production means more emphasis must be placed on margins—today, it is often quality over quantity. Quality control, in fact, is the name of the manufacturing game. For this reason, labor and resources must (more…)