Fast Cycle Production

Once the machines were purchased (during good times), several things could happen to muddy the waters. If orders stopped coming in at the expected rate, it was suddenly discovered that too many machines had been purchased and utilization would deteriorate. It could also be true that only one super big super fast machine was purchased and although this machine was advertised as able to handle the load, problems here and there caused it to constantly cause product to back up. The super machine was now a bottleneck.

Too often, the quest for utilization causes companies to make decisions that adversely affected manufacturing’s ability to produce product in a timely fashion. Now if you are like me and believe that putting excess WIP on the floor in order to keep a machine fed is the equivalent of hitting your hand with a hammer in order to relieve a headache, you must then say that there has to be a better way of dealing with the issue. If you do, you are right. But since hindsight is always “20-20”, once a machine is purchased, the deed is done. Unless you are able to correct that situation economically, it is time to ensure that whatever decision that happens next is in the best interests of manufacturing. Too often this is not the case. Too often, manufacturing is given restrictions or requirements that inhibit its ability to produce product just to compensate for poor machine purchasing decisions.
Releasing orders to manufacturing that have incomplete kits or releasing orders that don’t have a requirement are two examples of hurting manufacturing. All you accomplish in those cases are to cause WIP to build up on the floor. There are only three things that can happen to WIP that is sitting on the floor unattended, and two of them are bad. The only good thing that can happen to that WIP is NOTHING! WIP sitting around causes all product CT to increase because it takes resources to manage the WIP and it takes up needed space. Quite often product quality is affected. Parts from kits sitting around are used on other product in order to get that product out. Product is often damaged by contact and handling and even corrosion. As I said, a number of things can happen and all of them are bad.

When employees start borrowing from one kit to feed another they are creating an endless loop that almost always eventually results in a serious problem. When product is built based on the assumption that it will eventually be needed, it could well end up as scrap or just sit around in finished goods and get marked off eventually. All of this is a waste and could be avoided by using decisions based on a proper production value set.

 But the problems experienced could have nothing to do with the decisions made by upper management and engineering. They may have made the proper decision and manufacturing  is the one that doesn’t have the proper value set. Good decisions may have been made with the machines but manufacturing makes production decisions that are misguided.