While it might sound like an involved process, manufacturing capacity planning really boils down to ensuring that manufacturers maximize their asset utilization. They must ensure that their machines and equipment encounter as little down time as possible. This all sounds pretty easy doesn’t it? Well, as any manufacturer will tell you, sometimes the best intentions are just that: intentions. Idle time in manufacturing is a reality on the shop floor. Nothing will stop it entirely. However, you can reduce its impact by following some simple practices.
Machine Utilization Comes From High Volumes and Repeatable Business
Maximizing your capacity relies upon a steady stream of business. Essentially, if you want to ensure 100% asset utilization, you have to have enough volume of business to properly manage production. In these instances, companies that have issues with capacity planning often have issues pertaining to production throughput. By this I mean that getting business isn’t the problem. Instead, their issues include meeting the delivery dates and increasing throughput. The business is there, but the production is falling short.
There are companies who excel in capacity planning. They do this by adopting some high efficiency management practices that are predicated on identifying downtime, eliminating it in all its forms, reducing cycle times and increasing production throughput.
The above video explains the importance of proper work cell layout and design. It also includes insight into how you can go about determining the productivity rates and volumes emerging from a given work cell. To read more about optimizing your shop floor, please go to: Simplifying Lean Manufacturing: Work Cell Output, Cycle Time Variances & Production Volumes
While capacity planning relates to scheduling and proper machine allocation, there are still some universal truths in manufacturing. If you don’t address the most common causes of downtime in your production, then no master scheduling plan will produce results. So, why are some companies ultimately successful in planning when others aren’t?
1. Dollarize the Impact of High Cycle Times
Manufacturers who excel in planning understand the importance of tracking their cycle times and eliminating downtime. They do this by immediately identifying the costs of work stoppages. In fact, when idle time is encountered, these companies are able to convert the lost production time into a dollar value, one that speaks directly to the issues on the shop floor. If they’re manufacturing a widget, and that widget’s gross profit is $10.00, and the downtime results in them manufacturing 20 less widgets a shift, then it’s easy to quantify the costs in a way that speaks to its severity.
Some see the issue as more severe. Paying employees not to work is the concern of a number of enterprises. Identifying idle time works because everyone from the manual laborer, to the guy on the CNC machine, to the shift manager, to the production manager, and all the way up the value chain, immediately understand what the impact is of work stoppages. Nothing is left to interpretation. The more frequent this occurs, the more costly it becomes.
2. Minimizing Transit Times Between Work Cells
The best manufacturers understand that a product’s cycle time includes all the operations needed to complete a finished good. While there are cycle times for the finished assembly, there are also individual cycle times for each and every work task and operation in production. One of those operations is the transit time to move work from one chain in the process to the next. The transit times between production work stations are a pivotal aspect of reducing the overall cycle time of finished goods.
If you want to read more about the importance of managing transit times, then read the following post:Minimizing Transit Times Between Production Work Cells
3. The Importance of Clear and Concise Information
Clear information encompasses all aspects of the employee’s training and the instructions they follow to complete their work tasks. This means that their work orders, bill of materials and assembly instructions are not only clear and concise, but can also be easily understood by all production employees. Nothing impedes manufacturing more than to have a bunch of workers standing idle, unsure of work instructions.
Success means there must be a universal language spoken on the manufacturing floor, one where everyone can easily slide into place and take over for someone else. This involves an aggressive cross-training program. It also involves work station prototyping were employees can set up and break down their work in understandable parts.
Production employees must be constantly made aware of how to read those aforementioned work-orders, bill of materials and assembly drawings, and be able to cover for unavailable workers. Flexibility in your workforce is paramount to controlling costs.
The above video explains the importance behind helping your production employees operate like surgeons.
4. Excellence in Quality Control and Documentation Control
In order for those work orders, instructions and bill of materials to make sense, you must adopt a solid quality control and documentation control program. Keeping those machines running depends upon making good parts. Your quality control should be involved in training your manufacturing employees on the ins and outs of your quality control process. This means they must be able to fill out engineering change notices (ECN) or quality control reviews (QCR). If you workers encounter an issue, and need it to be documented for future reference, then make sure to have a way for them to do exactly that.
Based on my own personal experience, I’ve seen the difference between a manufacturer where everyone knew the impact of work stoppages and high cycle times and a manufacturer where everyone had no clue. The first and most important rule in manufacturing capacity planning is to apply a dollar value the impact of lost time, and to make sure everyone in the organization is immediately aware of the impact of work stoppages.
Next, analyze every aspect of your cycle times. Do this from each individual work cell within workstations to the next chain in the process. Make sure to track the transit times as well. Use group training and cross-training exercises to train all employees in order to have that flexible workforce that’s such an important aspect of controlling costs. Finally, have a mechanism where employees can document issues. Adopt a strong quality control process that will bring issues to the forefront and allow employees to document them for future reference.
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