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07/27/2012 02:52 PM
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Hi
we have started our lean journey one year back. our work place is better organised and all standard products are made on time. we use KANBAN and cellular manufacturing. All products are made against orders due to many variants. For runners we keep components in KANBAN and they are made against order and almost ontime. We face problem with repeaters and strangers (first time)
We have chronic problem of not meeting delivery dates and they are shifted multiple times. We are in low cost low volume high variants type of production. my concern is we do not know what is the exact problem. An order consists of runners and repeaters. All runners are getting ready on time but for repeaters and strangers there is multiple time rescheduling, fire fighting, expediting. Since the order needs to be shipped as a whole the entire order gets delayed. Also since all runners getting ready on time, finished goods inventory is high. Inventory turns are poor.
the delay of repeaters, strangers have multiple dimentions like non standard material input, no stable process, lack of clarity on customer requirement, error in order booking, incorrect BOM , lack of standard work instructions, unpredictible lead time etc.. the impact of few items is very large on sales and it creates ripples everywhere. most of the energy is being spent fire fighting,
I would like to use right lean tool to solve this mutlidimentional problem. Any suggestion on this.
VN
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07/30/2012 12:34 PM
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Vikas,
The first lean tool I'd recommend using is a Value Stream Map. It sounds like you have a fairly complex series of processes that all need to be synchronized in order to satisfy your customers. Most of us have similar problems. Process Mapping allows one to see what's really going on, where the waste and problems are occurring and even what you might need to do to fix it. So go to Gemba, follow the flow and capture it for all to see. Then you can begin to fix the problems you find with appropriate Lean tools.
Tom
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08/02/2012 03:59 PM
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Hi Vikas
First I agree with Thomas get a VSM done.
Next get your sales and order acceptance procedures standardized so that you know what you a actually trying to make, seems like two sets of products come in with less than the required information for you to produce them, and that is not a tolerable state.
Anoither thing is take a hard look at some of these odd products that cause you all the probloems and see if they really make you money. In the past I have done this often and found that in 90% of the cases those oddballs actually cost you money to make, and that is just plan bad business. Judging from all the problems you are getting I would bet many if not all of them are actually costing your business.
These four issues really show how bad your order acceptance process is and they should be held accountable fpr the cost over runs from these items. The only way to fix them is fix the order process. That process also has to take into account odd materials, and provide the margins to handle them if not it is their failure, not productions.
lack of clarity on customer requirement
error in order booking
incorrect BOM
non standard material input
And you need to couple the order process to the purchasing process, so that you know your leadtimes better, so that you eliminate the unpredictible lead time problem.
The last two are just the end result of always accepting special orders, you cannot have them because you have never done them before or do them so rarely that it is like not having done them before.
no stable process
lack of standard work instructions
You really need to take a hard look at what taking to many special orders costs you in real terms, I doubt your CFO knows what Activity Based Costing is, but he should, most likely you are using Standard Costing, which often dumps those special order costs onto regular product, meaning that most if not all special orders actually cost you money to make.
Sorry there is no magic bullet for what you are facing, you need to get your sales system undercontrol, and get your costing system checkedout. Always getting special orders is a dead giveaway something is wrong in your costing system.
All my best.
Robert Drescher
ELSE Inc.
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08/03/2012 11:45 AM
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Thanks to thomas and roberts for your suggestions. I concur with all your suggestions and working on them. I am specifically working on
1. correctness of BOM
2. Correct order entry
3. clarity of customer requirement while order booking
One more input is our sales team always justifies/ argues about non standard products saying they get the order because of these not standard products esle they will loose it. These non standard products are small part of an order but sales team forced to accept the order else they will loose the business. For retaining the customers also sometimes they need to accept these orders.
In PULL system planning/scheduling vanishes and there is auto correction in the loops as takt time varies. But at present we talk much about planning failure of non standard and hence due date delivery performance.
VN
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