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Page 1 of 5  Throughput
Problem: Work is released haphazardly. Employees do not follow a schedule.
In a typical manufacturing environment, employees are driven by often contradictory objectives: Get as much work done as possible, be as productive as possible and follow the schedule. To be productive, employees need to cherry pick the jobs that yield the highest earned hours. Those Jobs often aren't the ones next on the schedule. The worst impact of this cherry picking is that often valuable and limited raw materials get used up for the wrong jobs so when the right jobs are scheduled, the materials are gone.
Solution:
Employees need to follow a strict material release schedule to make the RIGHT parts in the RIGHT quantity at the RIGHT time.
- Solumina's graphical dispatch can hand out the work-instructions and sign-off requirements for the jobs that have the highest priority. No more cherry picking. Employees have instant visibility to material and tool availability from your legacy data so they understand their options and the impact of their decisions.
Results:
Constraints don't starve, and plant throughput is optimized.
Problem: The parts, tools, and instructions my employees need aren't available to them when and where they need them.
In a paper world, information is supplied from dozens of different locations. Their formats and method of delivery vary. The employee may have to go to a drawing crib for one document and to a microfiche reader/printer for another. Some are printed by planning and controlled. If these get lost it takes an inordinate amount of time to get another set. Paper data doesn't stay current which means your employees may be cutting into an expensive raw material or assembling a complex component with the wrong parts, tools or methods. That means REWORK.
Solution:
Your direct and indirect employees need direct, single-glass access to the drawings, instructions, tool and part data. They don't have time to run around looking for data. Also, the data needs to be current and up to date.
- Solumina delivers all the instructions and related data electronically in one place.
- Engineering changes are processed on-line in minutes. Holds are placed on orders being changed so no work can be performed with obsolete instructions.
- Schedules are up to the minute.
Results:
Employees spend their time doing what they are hired for: making parts. Our studies have shown that employees can increase their output by 30% by using Solumina.
Problem: I have parts and tool shortages that I should have known about and planned around earlier.
Often the tools and parts or materials that your employees need are in stock (and costing you money) but are either not ready for use or have been used and consumed on the wrong job. Sometimes, jobs get queued to the workstation when the parts or tools are unavailable. Much of these events are linked to the fact that the support and planning personnel don't have visibility to a common "schedule and availability" set of data. Your in-house supply chain, if you will, is unsynchronized.
Solution:
Everyone supporting the manufacturing process need to be working on the same page. Schedules should be central and available. Parts availability should be easy to see-review and react to. Tool usage should be reviewed in advance and the proper tools should be calibrated and ready to go BEFORE the scheduled job start.
- Solumina gives ALL support personnel on-line access to THE schedule so they can be pre-set, packaged and ready to go in time.
- Tools approaching calibration date can flag the appropriate personnel.
- Parts issued but not consumed can be seen and re-directed if schedule priorities have changed.
Results:
More throughput out of the plant.
Problem: My employees are constantly waiting for additional instructions before they can finish a job.
In complex (manufacturing and maintenance) there is a constant component of unplanned work. This can be anything from engineering changes causing a necessary rework to finding discrepancies in the component that needs repair instructions. In a paper world, it takes time for these unplanned events to get to the people that can decide how best to handle them. From that point, it can take days or sometimes weeks to author the work-instructions and support documents and get them to the shop. All this time the job sits idle. If the job is a manufactured part. Every day it sits in MRB or on the shop floor, chances increase it will become obsolete and need more rework or even be scrapped.
Solution:
As unplanned work arises, the right people need instant notification. The authors need complete visibility to what work was performed without having to leave their office. A complete database of previously performed or "Standard" repairs needs to be at the author's fingertips so the task can be planned and delivered to the shop quickly.
- Solumina provides instant feedback to the people that need to decide how to handle work arising.
- All previously planned and executed work can be re-used and edited.
- Repair instructions get out quickly and accurately.
Results:
Cycle times drop significantly.
Problem: Jobs sit for weeks or months without someone completing them making my work-in-process shoot through the roof.
There are three major reasons why work sits idle.
- The jobs were cherry picked and completed out of sequence. The wrong jobs sit at the constraints while the needed parts are nowhere to be found.
- Un-planned work arose on the job and it sits waiting for disposition instructions.
- Jobs were scheduled and released with shortages.
Solution:
Visibility of schedule and constraints like shortages and discrepancies. Dispatch of work in sequence to schedule that is ready to be worked.
Results:
Improved flow of work through the factory. Reduction of idle time for job and work in process.
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