MRPII-JIT-TQM Integration
Part 3 of 6

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Streamline Material/Production Flow, Cellular Manufacturing

Streamlining material and production flow is the first step toward JIT manufacturing. A traditional manufacturing environment is typically characterized by work orders and excessive lead times due to multilevel bill of materials and large production lots. The multilevel bills typically cause multilevel stocking accompanied by wasteful kitting, short­age tracking and redundant trips between stockroom and production floor.

A repetitive environment typically consists of a final as­sembly line manufacturing like end items in a product family and is supported by a few feeder subassembly areas. The manufacturing processes are usually repetitive with repetitive supply of materials to the line. A hybrid environ­ment on the other hand consists of varying degree of repetitive and discrete manufacturing processes and typi­cally uses a functionally laid out production floor. A study is required to be undertaken to analyze the product family organization, current material flow, production processes and cycle times; identify the redundant operations and wastes in the processes, optimize material movements and develop a streamlined manufacturing layout.

The resulting layout usually is a flow line supported by a couple of feeder cells in the case of repetitive manufactur­ing. In the case of hybrid manufacturing it is a combination of work centers and work cells linked together to provide a cost effective material and production flow from compo­nents to end items. The work centers are laid out by functions consisting of like machines or processes and the work cells are laid out to manufacture like family of parts in close proximity to maintain streamlined flow. The pro­duction layouts may lead to few focus factories organized around product families. As far as the repetitive items are concerned, the MRP-Driven Pull System described else­where in this paper identifying these parts and their usage can be used to plan Kanban inventory and floor space requirements at the point of consumption.
Conceptual System Designs

Figures 2 and 3 show the conceptual designs for integrated MRP II/JIT systems for a repetitive manufacturing envi­ronment and a hybrid manufacturing environment respec­tively. Each figure shows an outline of the various sub­systems and their interfaces in the total system. The conceptual system design consists of the long term and intermediate term planning systems, and intermediate and short term execution and control systems.
Planning Subsystems

The long term and intermediate term planning systems from Business Planning to MRP I are similar to traditional MRP II approach except that the Master Production Sched­ule is rate based and consists of mixed models at the product family or subfamily level and ensures level load on the key resources. The traditional approach of capacity planning, shop floor control and labor reporting by work order is limited to functionally laid out work centers, for example, the fabrication shop in the hybrid environment and is nonex­istent for the repetitive environment. The remaining plan­ning systems consist of the traditional MRPI system and the blanket and discrete vendor procurement systems.

To be Continued