Identifying and unlocking value in manufacturing can be challenging. When demand spikes, even the most well-designed process can struggle to keep up. The more complexity you have in people, products, process steps, and parts, the greater the opportunity for inefficiency, loss, and dissatisfying low service levels.
In my experience, the foundational steps for uncovering value in manufacturing start with process mapping.
Step 1: Map Your Current Production Processes
One common question is how to get started with process improvement. Peter Drucker, an influential author considered the father of modern business management, is credited with saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” The first step in any process improvement effort is to define and document the process. This includes identifying the inputs, outputs, key activities, and resources involved in each step of the process.
Start with a simple flow chart following the product from raw materials to finished good. And get buy-in from key stakeholders before adding additional information. While it is important to capture information about special situations that deviate from the standard process, don’t try to immediately add them to the process map. Instead, document them for later review once the core process is established.
Step 2: Analyze
Once you have a documented process that everyone agrees on as a baseline, you can begin to analyze it to identify the most significant contributors keeping you from meeting your production goals.
Start by gathering all available data, such as raw material cost, crew size, labor cost, machine/assembly cycle times, sales volume, production throughput, and scrap. Use Pareto charts to visualize the data and understand the relative value of individual contributors to cost of goods sold (COGS) and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Frame your analysis using one of several perspectives: loss analysis (OEE), bottleneck analysis, or the seven forms of waste from the Toyota Production System, starting with the largest contributors. Conduct root cause analysis (RCA) sessions with the help of process experts to identify the true source of the largest issues.
And go to the Gemba, the actual place where the work is being done, to see the process firsthand and ask questions of those doing the work to understand their actions. I’ve found that no matter how good your data is, you have to observe and talk to people to verify it and gain context.
Step 3: Take Action
Process improvement is an iterative and continuous process. One easy and fast way to make improvements is by implementing aspects of 5S. A workplace organization method from the Toyota Production System, it helps establish a sustainable, productive work environment. The five steps of 5S are:
- Sort: remove all unnecessary clutter.
- Set in order: make it obvious where material, tools, etc. belong.
- Shine: clean everything.
- Standardize: establish policies and procedures, work instructions, and expectations.
- Sustain: conduct daily reviews to maintain standardization and performance improvement.
The first three S’s can be easy and fast. The 4th and 5th can be much more work, and success is highly dependent on your culture and your leadership. I’ll save Standardize and Sustain for a future blog post.
Next, run Kaizen events—short brainstorming sessions with a cross-functional mix of operators, engineers, and maintenance technicians—to tackle individual issues. Test potential fixes to determine their effectiveness before making major investments. For multivariable situations, conduct a Six Sigma design of experiments to isolate individual variables to understand which factors have the greatest impact on the expected and desired outcome.
This effort should yield a sizeable list of improvement projects that need to be prioritized to balance impact, complexity of solution, cost, and resource availability. It’s best to create a short project charter for the most complex of the projects to understand the justification, duration, impact to ongoing operations, costs, and resources needed.
When Process Maps and Kaizen Events Aren’t Enough
There are times though when your manufacturing complexity is simply too great to be captured in a limited number of process maps. Complexity factors include:
- A substantial number of SKUs produced, kitted, and/or packaged
- An expansive list of sometimes nearly redundant raw materials
- Significant equipment sanitation requirements and/or changeover complications
- Fluid and amplified demand signals keeping production efficiency and inventory levels off-balance
- Underinvested maintenance budgets leading to too frequent short-stops and breakdowns
These can drive incredible volatility in your sales and operations planning (S&OP), leaving your customers, and yourselves as the executive leaders, questioning your reliability and your manufacturing prowess.
Complexity itself is not a negative. It simply requires modern computing power to absorb the many attributes and factors that drive decision-making in those complex environments. It needs a solid foundation of process mapping and process improvement, with advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems powering the decision-making both at the plant and in corporate HQ. APS systems can give you exponentially more horsepower to dynamically make optimal decisions by running simulation modeling of all your processes through the complex scenarios you face weekly, daily, and even hourly.
Sometimes the answer isn’t that you need to simplify your manufacturing, but rather that you need to embrace tools, systems, and techniques that match the complexity of your manufacturing.
April 10, 2024
Author
"*" indicates required fields