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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Adverti$er
March 2019 #11236 Page #39
The Drummond Short Schedule Time-Standard System Using Man-Minutes to Manage Your Labor Todd Drummond
Industrial engineering – “The branch of engineering that is concerned with the production of industrial goods, especially by the design of efficient plants and procedures and the management of materials, energy, and labor.” (Source: The Free Dictionary)
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any of the elderly people in our industry have heard of the “Houlihan System.” Way back in the ‘70s, John Houlihan (and later, Don Ullmer and Frank Zientarski, industrial engineers [IE]), helped bring attention to what many considered a new system. This Houlihan system proved that truss manufacturers would have noticeable and worthwhile gains in productivity when properly applied (explained in detail below). What is the Houlihan Drummond System? Well, quite simply, John—and yours truly—simply added our names to a method of applying short scheduling measurement using time standards based on man-minutes for truss manufacturing. One must first begin with reliable units of measurement of time. During my studies in industrial engineering, I performed time studies to develop proper time units for roof truss manufacturing. Any IE will tell you that the units of board foot (BF), linear foot, or piece count for truss manufacturing do not stand up to true industrial engineering principles of task-specificity, normal deviation criteria, and repeatability of results. Proper units of time for time-standard units are referred to as man-minutes (MM), man-hours (MH), realistic expectancy (RE), or scheduled units (SU), which are all measurements of time. I asked Keith Myers of Woodhaven Lumber and Millwork in NJ, “Are you using the time standards for MM that I provided you during the consultation and, if so, how have they worked out for you compared to BF?” Keith replied, “Your time standards are perfect. They are far more accurate than BF. We are much more comfortable with the MM for the estimation of labor for both the pricing and shop scheduling. BF is just too unreliable for our needs.” The most common units of measurement used in the truss industry are board footage and material cost, and both units are easily derived from truss engineering programs. If you use BF for your labor estimation, how is it that a large agriculture project (high BF, low setup time) versus a custom home (low BF, high setup time) does not have a consistent ratio correlation of BF per hour? The same can be said about material cost versus labor cost; as material costs vary, it has nothing to do with the amount of labor needed for the projects. The exact same problems occur when trying to use linear footage or sales dollars. As the complexity of the project Continued next page
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