Who is Bill Gaw?
And why should we listen to him?
Best Manufacturing Practices
On-Time Delivery
PART III.
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Customer focused cells and simplification of routings and bills of material allow production requirements to be matched directly with customer orders. Operating in such a make to order environment can have significant benefits. All production is earmarked for a particular customer, excess waste (for instance inventory) can be removed from the system, and extremely close linkage between manufacturing and the customer is achieved. Manufacturing knows exactly how performance on a particular order will impact the customer. This knowledge allows manufacturing to better concentrate on meeting customer needs.Clearly, evolving to a make to order environment will highlight delivery problems. However, producing to customer order will not in and of itself improve delivery. Since buffer inventory is typically kept to a minimum, evolving to a make to order environment, especially if there is rapid change, may make delivery problems even worse. More help is clearly required. Computer Modeling of Orders, Capacity, and Delivery Increased simplification and evolution to a make to order environment allow manufacturers to get close to their customers. However, in most manufacturing environments, where rapid and significant change is common, this is not enough. Manufacturers need a tool to help them manage change in their businesses. This tool can help both as companies evolve to a simplified, customer focused, make to order manufacturing environment and after the evolution is complete. This paper proposes computer based finite capacity scheduling as a tool to help manufacturers manage change and achieve cost effective, on time delivery. It first describes how capacity limitations impact delivery and make finite capacity scheduling valuable. It then discusses how finite capacity scheduling's what-if capability can help manufacturers manage the change inherent in their business. Both of these steps are described below. How Capacity Limitations Impact Delivery In real world manufacturing plants, capacity is limited, or finite. When a plant is working on one requirement for production, often other requirements must wait their turn, resulting in late customer delivery. In simplified, make to order environments, it is possible to gage the impact of any single customer order on capacity. Companies have the capability to perform Master Scheduling analysis with actual customer orders and commit capacity at the point of order entry. Given available capacity and other existing customer orders, it is theoretically possible to come up with a highly accurate estimate of when a newly added customer order will be completed. Accurate estimates of customer order completions are extremely valuable, competitiveness enhancing data. Without this information, companies will either quote their customers overly optimistic or pessimistic lead times. Quote overly optimistic lead times and fail to deliver, and your dissatisfied customer is likely to turn to the competition. Quote overly pessimistic lead times, and you might never get a shot at the business.
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