Record spending on manufacturing construction heralds a made-in-the-U.S. rebound, stoked by green-energy incentives and concerns about foreign supply chains.
Source: America Is Back in the Factory Business – WSJ
Archives for category: Lean manufacturing
Lessons from the last downturn lead the world’s foremost auto manufacturer to reinvent the production line.
Source: Inside Toyota’s Takaoka #2 Line: The Most Flexible Line In The World – The Drive
Many people have heard of the term Just in Time (JIT) as it relates to manufacturing, production scheduling, or delivery. But have you heard of Just in Case (JIC) manufacturing? It is a term I coined years ago. I coined the term one day while walking through a plant that only produced finished goods to order. The business did not actively stock finished goods. They stocked raw material and some sub-assemblies in order to produce with relatively short lead times, but in general they did not stock finished goods. During the walk through, I looked at a work order for a part that was being machined. The operator was machining lets say 30 parts, yet the sales order associated with the work order only called for 15 or 20 parts. I asked the machine operator and his supervisor why they were machining more parts than were called for by the sales order. The response I received was quite curious: “this is a really tough part to machine and we have many rejects, thus we produce extra parts just in case (italics added) we have to scrap a part.” At that point a new term was born: Just in Case (JIC) manufacturing. I asked the operator how often they actually had to scrap a part. Neither he nor his supervisor could answer the question.
I told the supervisor that I suspected that they were overproducing and tying up unneeded cash in inventory. Additionally, this was a plant that was trying to improve on-time delivery. I explained to the supervisor that if they were tying up capacity by producing excess and unneeded parts, that they were impeding their ability to produce on-time with short lead-times. The supervisor assured me that this didn’t happen often. I then asked the supervisor to take a walk with me to the warehouse. I asked the supervisor if he was sure they didn’t overproduce on a regular basis. He assured me they didn’t. I then asked one of the warehouse employees to pull up several recently completed work orders for parts that had been delivered to inventory. When we checked several of the recently completed work orders, we found that a large percentage of them were completed for quantities that were larger than what the sales order called for. At this point the supervisor was a little embarrassed, but there is more to come. Employees on the floor ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS know more about what is going on in a plant than supervisors and managers. Knowing this, I engaged the warehouse employees in a conversation on this subject and they assured us that this happened on a regular basis. Once again, the supervisor was embarrassed. At this point the employees told me about the T location. Being an inquisitive lad, I asked what is the T location. Their response: “oh that the is the trailer we have outside where we store all of the production overruns.” At this point the supervisor was quite embarrassed.
As you might imagine the supervisor was besides himself. But being a smart guy he put a stop to the overproduction and eventually eliminated the T location. With several other changes we were able to improve the plant’s on time delivery performance as well as their financial performance.
Key takeaways / reminders from that day: 1. I learned on that day that Inventory is the Root of All Evil. If you want to know if you have a problem in manufacturing, check your inventory levels to make sure you don’t have an issue with JIC manufacturing. 2. I learned about JIC manufacturing. It is more endemic than you might imagine. Walk the floor and check your work orders to see if you have a case of JIC. 3. Always talk to the hourly employees, because they know what is really taking place on the floor.
Has anyone else encountered similar issues?
Rindge Leaphart
rindgeleaphart 