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Decluttering Production Shop Floors with : Simplifying Work Flow

Sometimes increasing production throughput can be as simple as rearranging your production shop floor. In fact, when it comes to lowering production cycle times, few approaches are as powerful as using spaghetti diagrams.

You'll need your production employees to work alongside you for this project as their input is essential to success. 

Making those employees part of the solution will ensure they buy in to the process.

Sample Excel Takt Board for Production Tracking and Manufacturing

Takt time is the actual available production time divided by the number of units that must be produced. A Takt board is a production tracking board that captures the variances between planned production and actual production.

This variance can be tracked by shift, by hour, by day or by work order. The board is often positioned on the shop floor in order to keep employees up-to-date on the company's progress.

Comments can be added to the Takt board any time production falls short of expected volumes. The comments are meant to outline the causes of work stoppages, delays and downtime.  

Your Kitchen is a Lean Manufacturing Work Cell

Companies tend to think that lean manufacturing is a complicated, convoluted and drawn-out process. Granted, the calculations involved in determining production throughput and manufacturing capacity can be quite an involved and laborious affair. However, lean manufacturing itself is a fairly easy concept to grasp. In fact, the best example of lean manufacturing can be found right in your own kitchen.

Five Easily Ignored Causes of Downtime in Manufacturing: Eliminating Work Stoppages

Manufacturing work stoppages and downtime can mean the difference between making a profit, and incurring a loss. However, some causes of downtime have absolutely nothing to do with how work is being done on the shop floor. In fact, it’s common for these problems to originate long before the production package and work orders are released to manufacturing. Here are five easily ignored causes of manufacturing downtime that result in low production volumes.

Top 5 Pareto Principle Applications in Business: A Simple Rule That Affects So Much of What You Do

The Pareto principle is one of those universal rules of business that has far-reaching implications for today's enterprises. It can help companies mitigate risk by allowing them to identify potentially dangerous outcomes of existing strategies. The focus is simple: Be proactive instead of reactive. The rule originated in 1906 from Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who found that 80 percent of land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of its population. How does this apply to businesses?

 

Monthly, Quarterly and Yearly Production Schedule & Report for Small Manufacturers

Small manufacturers must track their actual production volumes relative to their production goals in order to define their percentage in attaining those goals. In this case, a column bar graph fills the role of being both a production schedule and a production report. This provides insight into the ups and downs of a company’s production volumes on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. 

This report helps a small manufacturer summarize their quarterly and yearly production volumes. The information can be used to address possible concerns and issues in-between these periods. So, what does such a report look like and how can small manufacturers use it in order to identify potential issues in manufacturing?

Capturing Work Stoppages in a Work Cell: Tracking Cycle Times and Defining Benchmark Times in Manufacturing

Today, I thought I would revisit a project I ran a little over a year ago with a small manufacturer here in Montreal. When I first started adding YouTube videos to my site, I did a video about this very same project. However, I didn’t give it the attention it deserved. More importantly, I failed to explain and outline three simple steps to defining your benchmark cycle time in a given work cell, work station or across your entire shop floor. Next, you track your variances against that ideal time.

Video Explaining how to Price a Product as a Manufacturer

Today, I wanted to post a video on how to price a product as a small manufacturer. Unfortunately, smaller enterprises lack the real-time tracking capabilities that comes from having an ERP or MRP system. As such, they can’t track material allocation, cycle times, costs and production throughput as easily. To help, I’ve come up with a sample excel spreadsheet that accounts for raw materials, labor, overhead and profit when pricing a product.

JIT Safety Stock: Even Just in Time Needs Just In Case Inventory

Companies love Just in Time supply chains: Minimal inventory counts, low cost of capital and the ability to match receivables to payables are just some of the benefits of a pull strategy whose primary goal is to reduce inventories within the value stream. So, does that mean JIT doesn’t need a safety stock?

Kan-Ban Manufacturing: Lean Strategies for Demand-Driven Industries

A Kan-Ban is a fairly simple production process. The idea is to have semi-finished goods in various operations, all waiting for customers to place orders. That customer demand initiates the process by moving semi-finished goods to the next operation in order to replenish the finished good counts. In the end, it’s the ideal solution to a demand-driven industry and it’s fairly easy to implement and manage.