Lead times

I am working for an appeal manufacturing company and the customers are pushing us to reduce lead times and increase flexibility. Does any one have as idea as to how we can approach this. I can give you specific details if need.

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
Karl Hemilton
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I think Scott Adams has covered this in detail (:

Short-term, there's not much that can be done. Long term, building the disciple and documentation system for efficient design reuse will help. I was about to make a joke about "firing all the slow engineers and obstructionist managers", but I won't.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Yes, details would help a lot! The more, the better. First off, define "appeal manufacturing" or clear up the typo.

What are the ten things that take the longest to complete?

Why not just increase the amount of inventory you have on hand?

Oh, Jesus. I just noticed that this is cross-posted all over the place to technical groups. You ought to post this to the business groups, like misc.business.moderated.

Mike

Reply to
Mike Turco

^^^^^^ apparel?

I think this is where a system analyst earns his keep. How about forming a focus group of key players of each department that is affected from sales through shipping. Brainstorm to determine what specifically the market wants and how you can provide it. You might end up with a premium fast track system along side the existing one for a while (or forever).

Thad

Reply to
Thad Smith

Sorry guys. It should be apparel manufacturing.

Reply to
Karl Hemilton

In order to reduce lead times you need to look at several things on the shop floor and the process ahead of it that takes the orders. Map out the entire process from the time the customer calls in the order to the time the order leaves the building and arrives at the customers location. Mark down every step along the way and assign a time value to each step. Get your total amount of time

Follow an order around from start to finish. Map out how far each order takes from raw material to finished product. Assign a value in feet for each step. Get your total amount of travel

Map out the actual amount of time that is spent actually spent adding value to the garment. That would be things like sewing, cutting, dying etc. The difference between the total amount of time between order taking and delivery and the amount of time actually spent changing the garment from raw material is the non value added time. You will likely find out that the amount of time actually spent on value added is no where near the amount of total time spent. The non value added time is where you need to start reducing.

In a lot of cases you will find low hanging fruit where you can take out time. Orders that remain in someones inbox is one. Duplication of steps is another one. Product that travels from one side of the building to the other and back again is waste and increases lead time. See if you can move equipment closer to one another.

I could go on forever but you get the idea. Reduce waste of transportation Reduce the amount of time it takes to change over a machine to run another order. Eliminate redundant steps Etc. Increasing inventory is not the answer. That increases your costs and leaves you open for waste of product that suddenly no one wants to order or it gets ruined. Tools for reducing non value added steps or functions are the Kaizen process, value stream mapping, autonomous maintenance, changeover reduction, etc. At all times involve the production worker. They know where the waste is.

I used to run the continuous improvement dept at the auto parts plant that I worked at. It is amazing on the improvements that can be gained with a minimum of time and money.

Use your brains before you open your wallet.

Reply to
ba5416

Yeah, bring in a consultant (hint, hint)... :O)

Reply to
Stan de SD

My best advice is to apply Goldratt's Theory of Constraints. Visit - The Improvement Guru

Reply to
Bill Buck

There is no quick fix for this. It is primarily a cultural and organisational thing. Tell me more about the current process and maybe i can make some usful suggestions.

Ian

Reply to
Ian Bell

HIre a consultant.... that really is the brunt of it. If you ever have to ask "how do I reduce lead times" you know you are in trouble. There are about a million and one reasons why you have slow lead times. And a billion and one possible solutions that may or may not work.

If you cant afford a consultant you need to document your ENTIRE process and all the sub-processes and pre-processes and look for problems. you also need a really good knowledge of organisational structure and process planning and operations research. .... Hire a consultant (They are worth their weight in gold if you can find the right one)

BTW i am not a consutant. I am a regular old mechanical engineer.

Reply to
Reg

Just print up some business cards that say "consultant" on them. That's how I got started. ;O)

Reply to
Stan de SD

"You are not along"

This happens in every company I deal with, customers order back-to-back and expect you to 'magic' the product out of thin air. I used to work for a company that manufactured large and expensive instruments. Then one day I developed a small low-cost instrument and we had to make some big changes to our production to meet the cost and quantity issues. Here are a few techniques we used:

A good starting point may be to speak with your customer and explain the situation; your problem is their problem. See if they will be prepared to enter in to some kind of rolling order, say X number of units per month. However they may not be too keen to expose themselves in this way.

Next try talking to your suppliers. Most of the time they are happy to enter in to a 'call-off' situation where you will agree to take Y number of components each month. Manufacturers don't mind this too much as it helps with cash flow forecasts. They will tend to make and stock the whole (or part) order, shipping the agreed amount each month. They are happy to reduce or increase the volume shipped for any month so long as you take the total order by the end of the agreed period (plus or minus a couple of months).

Finally, look at how you can speed things up in-house. Develop custom test-rigs and/or software to speed up the pass-off testing. Build production jigs to speed up any assembly (which will also improve quality and repeatability). See about sub-contracting some time-consuming aspects of the assembly phase (let someone else worry about lead-times) such as cable assemblies, or firmware programming.

I hope this will help in some way!

Regards,

Reply to
Geoffrey Swales

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