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…)

For a variety of reasons, some manufacturers prefer to schedule jobs according to the limitation of resources and capacity found within their system. Scheduling processes that, from the outset, take the limited capacity of a plant to produce are said to be using a finite approach to scheduling management. For the manufacturer, this approach works a schedule according to capacity criteria set in advance of production. The criteria can include any number of factors such as job due dates, job importance, and even the very importance of the customer to the manufacturer.

Finite scheduling means that you are more often than not running your most important jobs first, getting them out as close to the promised delivery due date as possible, while hoping to return to less vital jobs in due time. (more…)

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a mode of manufacturing built upon the notion of a single software program serving the needs of all aspects of the operation. In strict terms, the true ambition of ERP is to integrate all departments and functions across a manufacturer through the single-source software program, while eliminating departmental standalone computer systems.

It is hoped that such integration will facilitate the sharing of the same real-time data simultaneously to all areas of the plant, thus coordinating decision-making processes and outcomes. To this end, an ERP approach can have significant on-time delivery improvements and positive ROI–if, the software is installed properly, integrated system-wide, and correctly utilized in operation. (more…)