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05/31/2012 04:43 PM
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Greetings,
My name is Juan M. Araya. I am an Industrial Engineer from Georgia Tech, and am currently a candidate for the International Master of Industrial Management, a joint program coordinated by KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Politecnico di Milano (Italy, and Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain).
As part of my Master Thesis coursework, I have been developing a methodology to implement Value Stream Mapping, in High-Mix, Low-Volume manufacturing environments. In parallel, I have been implementing the methodology by doing an internship with Boston Scientific (medical devices manufacturer), in one of their job shop processes. We have seen very good benefits in terms of WIP, lead time, and efficiency.
In short, I have researched a lot of literature on High-Mix, Low-Volume manufacturing, and merged the methodologies with Value Stream Mapping and some innovative ideas to provide a visual, inclusive, and simple representation for systematically improving High-Mix, Low-Volume Processes. I acknowledge that the subject has been tackled before in readings such as Creating Mixed Model Value Streams, Value Network Mapping, and others, however, I feel that all of them have important drawbacks that limit
their full potential.
I would like to publish my methodology in this website, or in other Lean journals. Any insight as to who I can contact to do this would be greatly appreciated. My e-mail is JuanMAraya2@gmail.com. I would also like to clear up that I have no monetary intentions with this. I just want to get published, and spread what I believe is a helpful tool.
In addition to providing some innovative ways to complete the Current State Map, the steps to reach the future state are the following:
1. How to Gain Visibility of the Production Floor?
2. How to Ensure FIFO in the Production Floor?
3. Where to Implement continuous Flow through dedicated production lines?
4. Where to implement continuous flow through flexible manufacturing cells?
5. Where to Implement Supermarket Pull Systems using the Product Variety Funnel?
6. Where to Implement POLCA Cards to control the WIP?
7. What is the Pacemaker at each Loop?
8. How to Level the Mix to meet the production schedule?
9. What Improvements are necessary to reach the future state?
10. How to Standardize new work flow?
If you would like to read the full paper, please contact me, I would love to hear some opinions.
Thank you!
Juan M. Araya
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06/14/2012 10:16 AM
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Originally posted by: JuanMAraya
.................I would like to publish my methodology in this website, or in other Lean journals. Any insight as to who I can contact to do this would be greatly appreciated. My e-mail is JuanMAraya2@gmail.com. I would also like to clear up that I have no monetary intentions with this. I just want to get published, and spread what I believe is a helpful tool ........................
Juan,
I requested you for a copy offline a week ago. My email address is prasad@optisol.biz. I am still hoping to receive the copy from you. I worked as faculty of industrial engineering in the past and I have been working with job shops of high, mix-volume (HMLV) production for many years. There is a lot of diversity among HMLV systems. I think I can offer you valuable criticism on this forum using my knowledge and experience.
Prasad
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06/18/2012 10:52 AM
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Greetings,
I apologize for the delay.
Please find the attached paper which contains the methodology. I would love to hear any positive, or negative feedback that you might have. You may contact me at juanmaraya2@gmail.com.
I hope you find value for it in your operation.
Best regards,
Juan M. Araya
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06/18/2012 10:52 AM
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Juan,
Thanks for sending me a copy of your interesting article for which you must have made good effort. There is a lot of diversity among high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) production units. For example, in some HMLV systems, we may be able to describe workflow of a job by a project network (operation precedence network) not by a sequence of operations. In other words, production of a job may resemble execution of a project. It may sometimes be possible to simultaneously perform two or more operations of a job if the required resources are available. In some cases, the operation sequence may consist of loops (for repeating certain operations like heat treatment).
A majority of HMLV units are make-to-order (MTO) production systems where:
The nature, quantity, receiving time and due date of customer orders are unpredictable
Work orders are generated only against sales orders
The known variation among process requirements of work orders is large
Diverse products must be delivered by respective due dates
Final goods inventory is not to be maintained
Product mix and bottlenecks keep changing over time.
In job shop production management, job due dates and priorities play an important role along with large, known variation among jobs. I am unable to find the terms "due date" and priority" in your article. The objective of job shops is to increase on-time delivery, throughput and overall resource utilization and to reduce WIP and job lead times. The problem regularly faced by many HMLV units is how to determine an appropriate due date and a right start time for each new order in order to meet this objective.
For bringing visibility to shop floor in order to create future state VSM, you proposed adoption of "Electronic Work Order Board" with the help of VBA-enabled spreadsheets, electronic shop floor data collection and a central database. Nevertheless, this board shows only real-time status of workload for tracking purpose without any prediction of workflow. If your suggestion is possible, the scheduler can easily try a decent, cost-effective job shop scheduling software which contains a more powerful and interactive electronic board (with drag-and-drop operations) as one of many useful features. For HMLV units, such software predicts workflow, job completion times and moving bottlenecks and support fast and extensive what-if analysis and proactive capacity planning. It helps find correct reasons for possible job waiting times at different locations.
You claimed in this thread that your VSM approach to high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) production brought very good benefits to Boston Sceintific company. I could not find any reference to this success story in the article. The reported success would not have been possible for an intern like you without dedicated effort of somebody in the company. I would suggest you to coauthor the article with that person explaining how your VSM methodology brought very good benefits to the the company. BTW, take a glance at some best-of-breed job shop scheduling software and see how it works for HMLV production.
Prasad
Optisol
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06/20/2012 04:11 PM
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Hi Prasad!
That is great feedback! I really appreciate it! I will for sure take a look at a lot of your points.
I did not write up the methodology I used as a case study, but more as a manual, therefore, I did not reference my case at Boston Scientific whatsoever. In addition, referencing it would contain some information that I cannot disclose due to the sensitive nature of the medical devices industry.
However, I do assure you that there was not a dedicated resource to implementing the methodology except for me at Boston Scientific. As such, there would be no co-author for the methodology. The sources are the ones listed. Although there were many people that assisted in implementing the improvement efforts. Like I mentioned, I was an intern, yet I am a master's student intern with previous PM experience and extremely good academic background. I was given the freedom to develop the project inside the firm much like a consultant would. So I was not a simple intern doing administrative tasks. I hope that clears a few of your doubts.
I thank you very much for your incredible feedback!
-Juan M. Araya
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08/31/2012 02:42 PM
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Dear Prasad,
I was fascinated by your insights in to HMLV. We are manufacturer of machine tools (Precision Grinders) in India & our nature of business is typical HMLV , & very much like you described. Could you provide me names of some of the good job shop scheduling softwares which you have mentioned briefly in your reply. Thanks in advance.
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09/07/2012 10:20 AM
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Hi Kapil:
FYI, here is a website that carries a lot of useful information on how to approach Lean in high-mix low-volume environments http://pfast.ise.ohio-state.edu/pfast/ . Scheduling is a valuable tool but if my current job at Hoerbiger Corporation has taught me anything, it must be based on good data and be supported by at least one full-time IT-savvy person. Good luck! Prasad's software is powerful, then there is Preactor and Tactic if you are interested in comparisons.
Shahrukh
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09/07/2012 12:15 PM
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Originally posted by: 57686
Could you provide me names of some of the good job shop scheduling softwares which you have mentioned briefly in your reply.
Hi Kapil,
Sorry for not seeing this thread for many days. It is truly a challenge to control and manage HMLV production. If job routings and job status information are available, scheduling software is often quite useful for this purpose. Software products for HMLV include:
Preactor www.preactor.com
Tactic www.waterloo-software.com
Schedlyzer www.optisol.biz
Asprova www.asprova.com
Jobtimes www.jobtime.com
Taylor www.taylor.com
Prestige Scheduler www.pivotalz.com
I do not want to create any hype for job shop scheduling software. I caution you that there are a lot of failures with scheduling software for various reasons. I strongly advise any job shop to not buy any scheduling tool without having free trials on shop floor with actual data. Patience is needed to properly evaluate any tool.
Thanks to Dr. Irani for his positive words about my software which is included in the above list. Nowadays, many tiny job shops are also able to run some powerful scheduling tools. The vendors are able to provide necessary help over web.
Prasad
Optisol
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