As manufacturers, we are always looking for ways to make things run faster, cheaper, and simpler. Often, the approach we take involves reassessing the production elements within the plant that impede the system flow.

In such an analysis we take stock in the operation as a whole in search for efficiencies in the parts. In short, to enhance productivity while responding quickly to rapidly changing customer demands, we try to take full advantage of the resources available to our plant.

In doing so, the modern manufacturer strives for total enterprise resource planning (ERP) that ensures all plant elements are in synch with each other. In the evolution of ERP as a manufacturing concept, the idea of work center management has come to the forefront as a place of greatest gains in efficiency.

While pull-production techniques certainly strive for just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing modes, efficiencies that might be gained in …Read the rest of this entry »

Since the introduction of the lean system of continuous improvement manufacturing (CI), the desire has always been for inventory management that minimizes stock on hand, if not fully eliminating it.

True to lean principals, by eliminating waste at every turn in the manufacturing process quality is improved while production time and costs are reduced. As one of the “seven wastes” in lean philosophy, inventory proves to be inefficient when a plant maintains more on-hand inventory than is minimally required to produce products in the immediate time frame.

Rather than the batched, push-production system where large inventories are maintained for the potential of future sales or supply chain problems, lean methods employ …Read the rest of this entry »

In today’s increasingly competitive manufacturing environment, where tightened margins mean tightened grips on waste, running lean inventories is the name of the production game. Materials management is now the art of balancing production scheduling with inventory acquisition—tasks often performed by personnel with varying degrees of responsibility.

In large industrial organizations, the specialization of materials management has resulted in distinctions often drawn between the work of a buyer or purchasing agent and that of a purchasing manager.

While purchasing agents commonly focus on routine purchasing tasks, purchasing managers usually …Read the rest of this entry »

As it concerns profit margins, inventory control is one of the more visible and appreciable aspects of the manufacturing business today. Raw materials, goods in process, and finished goods are each the visible consequences of inventory in some form or fashion, and each means actual money locked up until product is finally shipped out to the customer. The longer any of these aspects stands idle in the shop, the longer company dollars get tied up in inventory carrying costs.

Conversely, the shorter the time inventory stays on-hand, the greater are the enhancements to the bottom-line. What every inventory manager seeks is a rapid throughput and system flow of inventory, especially as a result of the supply chain stream so vital to business today. When inventory moves rapidly through the plant, …Read the rest of this entry »

Accurate forecasting for raw materials and parts acquisition by inventory managers is an essential science in manufacturing today. With manufacturers expected to move at the speed of the Internet, processing orders, purchasing supplies, producing product, and shipping finished goods out the door must be accomplished with ever-decreasing lead times and ever-increasing expectations of quality.

It is a tightrope walk that inventory managers must take when assessing production needs as a result of sales orders and production throughput.

While customer demand can, in some instances, be anticipated based upon prior history, increased demands or slowdowns must also be contingencies planned for with regards to inventory management. In other words, …Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be the case in job shop manufacturing that when something needed to be done, the information relating to the task was passed along the line with paper forms. Dispatch lists, routers, schedules, requisitions, and job orders were written down on hardcopies.

However, hardcopy forms often proved to be inflexible pains to change if there were hiccups in the system. Furthermore, there was always a disconnection between areas like scheduling, shop floor work centers, inventory, and shipping.

In the old days of paper forms, there was the constant problem of miscommunication—everyone in the plant was not always on the same page. The results were …Read the rest of this entry »

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for manufacturing is, in short, the consolidation of a series of interconnected processes that when added together efficiently produce a finished product. In turn, each process has its own certain requirements that are specific to their area function—its own way of “doing things”.

For example, inventory management involves the processes of acquiring, storing, and distributing parts and other raw material to the various aspects of the operation. Shipping entails packaging and transportation of finished goods. In each instance, procedures should be developed in such a way that …Read the rest of this entry »

One of the toughest parts of total enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in manufacturing is, perhaps, the efficient collection, storing, and analysis of data. Whether information comes from the shop floor in terms of employee time, work in progress or materials inventory, or from departments such as master scheduling or shipping, the wide variety of operational areas in a plant calls for the centralization of information. Such a notion is at the very heart of Lean manufacturing, and it is one that is important in contemporary “pull production” manufacturing operations.

Of course, the centralization of data collection for use in manufacturing software means there must be centralized data collection points useable throughout a plant. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) terminal is a tool that gives shop employees a centralized port to input and interpret production data quickly and easily.

It is more important than ever that …Read the rest of this entry »

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. …Read the rest of this entry »

Whether in a major manufacturing organization or on a country newspaper route, the degree to which you are able to delivery the goods on-time is often the determining factor for the loyalty of any customer. While some tolerances can be made for the occasional late throw of the daily rag, in many businesses today on-time delivery is vital to performance, for manufacturing exists in a world built around the domino effect.

Your late delivery of product impacts the due dates promised by the myriad other shops in the manufacturing supply chain—as you fail, so too do those downstream from you. Suddenly, everyone is having to explain to their own customers the reasons for delays in the production and delivery of promised goods, and no increase in quality or reduction in price will help you back into the good graces of your clients. …Read the rest of this entry »