• Flexibility to react to constant changes
in the environment. As previously mentioned, the environment is
there to be forecasted, or in the best case, to be adapted to
it.
• Dynamic scheduling based on real-time
restrictions. To plan for the materials or to know beforehand
the bottlenecks is not enough. The production people need to
have the ability to schedule the plant based on the constant
changes that happen, controlling the execution of an order
through each of its production steps from its release to its
delivery, verifying at every moment who does what, when, how,
and where.
• Transfer the concepts of total quality to
the shop floor. Quality is laid on the foundation of one
fundamental principle, and this is that the customer is the one
who defines it. The same concept can be applied to the internal
customer, the one that is related to each work station, either
as vendor or as customer. In the fabrication process, the
quality of the internal customer will depend on the one of the
internal vendors, which makes it then mandatory to know in
detail what the customer's needs are, under which arrangement,
at what time and amount.
* Apply the philosophy of JIT and Kanban
dynamically. A workstation, under normal Kanban conditions,
interacts only with its contiguous customers and vendors,
reacting to the pull of the demand in any given situation on the
floor. On the other hand, the dynamic Kanban has exactly the
same principle, with the slight and important difference of not
only looking to the present situation, but also analyzing the
different alternatives of the immediate future, simulating
distinct scenarios to select the most viable according to the
actual circumstances.
* Manage the priorities based on customer
service. Contrary to defining fixed priorities, which present a
discipline and definition problem, synchronized manufacturing
methodology establishes priorities based on scheduled delivery
dates, providing an efficient customer service method. Also,
this method maintains the relative priority at each production
level, combining different optimization criterias at the same
time.
* Admit that nothing happens as planned.
Unpredictability will not disappear. Statistical fluctuations
like equipment breakdowns, missing raw materials, absence of
skilled employees, urgent orders, production delays, or any
other Murphy's law capable to be applied to the plant will
always be there, even with the best methods to avoid them.
* Have the capability to adapt to these
changes. Given the fluctuations, an increased ability to
readjust the schedule to
the changes will provide a sounder security
that the work stations will be producing in the right moment,
the right product, for the right customers.
This is something like the daily trip to our
office on a highway. We know that the average time of the trip
is 30 minutes, with a statistical fluctuation of 10%. Even by
knowing this fluctuation and therefore leaving the house 33
minutes earlier, nothing will prevent us from getting to the
office late if we encounter a traffic jam on our way. Now, what
is important is to listen to the radio services (control
system), which will inform each car (the work order) about the
situation (the variability), suggesting alternate ways
(rescheduling), to arrive on time (objective) at our office.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude with a story my
father used to tell me when I was a kid. Once upon a time, a man
wanted to fly a plane; unfortunately, he fell out of the plane;
fortunately, he had a parachute; unfortunately, it did not work;
fortunately, he saw he was aiming for a haystack; unfortunately,
a fork emerged from the haystack; fortunately, he avoided the
fork; unfortunately, he avoided the haystack, too.
Our production systems need to give us the
flexibility required at plant level. If flexibility is a
strategic objective sought to obtain a competitive advantage,
these systems will allow a company to interact at the variable
level at which the environment presents given that, after all
... Nothing happens as planned.
