To date, my posts on manufacturing have focused on setting up the ideal production work station and capturing downtime. Thinking about all the causes of work stoppages in production, I thought it would be prudent to provide a working list of reasons for why a manufacturer’s cycle times can be higher than anticipated. Consider this a list of things to look out for. In the end, it means reducing their impact and ensuring your company isn't encountering too muc downtime.
1. Unclear Work Orders, Instruction, Poor Manufacturing & Assembly Drawings:
A number of delays are directly attributed to poor assembly drawings, unclear work instructions and work orders as well as incomplete bill of material outlines. As is most often the case, everyone rationalizes lost time because of these delays. After all, how damaging is a couple of seconds here and there? Well, it's often far worse than a couple of seconds. Most of the time it extends beyond that and onto become a serious issue.
It’s amazing to think that a bad assembly or manufacturing drawing can cause so much trouble, but it does, and it can become infuriating to the operator when he/she needs to perform a seamless an uninterrupted work task. Unclear work instructions or incomplete work orders are killers on the production floor.
The remedy to erase this is to ensure that all production employees understand the outlines they are provided with, and that any issues are resolved with revisions on drawings and immediate responses to requests for clarity.
One of the best ways to clear up your bill of materials is by using a sub-assembly analysis. In this case, you are reviewing the material, spare parts and consumable requirements for multiple bill of materials and trying to find the most common parts. You'll reduce your inventory skews, lower costs through higher volume and reduce the impact of work stoppages due to unclear work instructions and incomplete parts lists. To read more please go to: Bill of Materials Essentials: Substructure and Sub-assembly Analysis
#2 Lack of Proper Work Order Control
This is kind of an odd item to be on this list, but I’ve seen it first hand on several occasions with a number of my customers. When manufacturers don’t properly control the amount of work being done through work orders (that specifies how much is to be made with how much material), they can come across production employees that will decide, on their own, to continue to manufacture products. Why would this happen? Well, for one reason, when your business manufacturers the same products consistently, day after day, week after week, it is easy to see how an employee might think making some extra units won’t hurt.
Imagine a situation where the employee finishes his production run early and has nothing to do for the next hour or two. If your company doesn’t control your production with work orders, you can be rest assured that you’ll come across production overruns.
3. Bullies on the Manufacturing Floor:
There is a political landscape in all offices, and most of us learn to deal with it. However, on the production floor, a production “Bully” can push co-workers around, monopolize tools and equipment, and basically make your job of improving things that much more difficult. I’ve seen the impacts of these “bullies” first hand, and their greatest asset is intimidation. When I’ve done cycle time analysis on production work cells, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve learned that an employee who needs the tools and equipment, can’t seem to get it because of some production Bully that insists on having the best of everything.
What’s worse is that management often either ignores the situation, or feels that to confront it directly will only cause problems. Don’t allow your production to be influenced by these bullies. They are not the majority, and should never be allowed to impact your production at the expense of harder working employees.
4. Production Delays Due to Stock-Outs:
It is absolutely inexcusable for production to be interrupted because of a lack of material or essential parts. Regardless, it seems to happen a lot and I’ve seen it occur over and over again. Managing inventory costs is important. There is no denying how important it is to keep inventory costs manageable. However, having your production interrupted because you don’t have the inventory when you need it, doesn’t help anybody. It costs your company lost production time, and you’ll likely incur higher freight costs to rush that material in. Now, do you think you saved money by keeping inventory levels low?
maintaining a safety stock is critical to reducing the high costs of material shortages. To learn about setting up a minimum and maximum level in inventory, please read: Determining Safety Stock & its Impact on Inventory Holding Costs
5. Lack of Production “jigs”:
Companies sometimes see assembly jigs as an extra cost. Let’s make this clear, jigs are essential to lowering cycle times. Jigs are nothing more than assembly blocks that provide an outline for production employees to assemble products. They lower cycle times, and improve quality by making sure the assembly is always made to the same dimensions. If your company does special small production runs, and don’t think you need production jigs, or can’t afford them, then you need to charge your customers for them.
6. Transit Time Between Production Cells:
Remember that while there is a cycle time for each operation when making a product, there is but one total cycle time for the finished product. Having a convoluted production floor with great distances between each production cell only adds to your cycle times. Understand the importance of minimizing transit times in manufacturing, between each production work cell.
Proper work cell layout and design is just one part of properly designing the lean manufacturing work cell. To read more please go to: Simplifying Lean Manufacturing: Work Cell Output, Cycle Time Variances & Production Volumes
7. Lack of Proper Training:
Granted, it takes time to train production employees, and it can be costly as well. However, its more costly when those employees make mistakes and force your company to have to rework the product, or are faced with rejections in quality control. Take the time to properly train your employees, and make sure they feel empowered to ask any question – regardless of what that question is. Here are the seven points summarized below.
- Have clear work orders, instructions and controlled assembly drawings.
- Control your work with the proper work orders and instruct employees not to do any production overruns.
- Eliminate the presence of production bullies in your manufacturing.
- Manage inventory, but not at the expense of a fluid work process.
- As much as possible, use production jigs.
- Eliminate long transit times between production cells.
- Train employees and empower them to come forward with questions.
Setting up the ideal work station is the perfect way to identify lost time. There are all kinds of causes of lost time in production. Make sure these issues are looked into. You may just find some ways to eliminate lost time and produce significant cost savings. In the end, it's about reducing the impact of work stoppages in manufacturing.
Comments