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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
July 2020 #12252 Page #26
Adverti$$er
The Battle Within Our Operations By Ben Hershey, CEO 4Ward Solutions Group
Does this conversation sound familiar? “How fast can we reliably supply that component job to our customer?” asks the sales manager. “And don’t make us look like fools by telling me a date that will never be met or is too far out!” “I will tell you how fast,” says the manufacturing manager, “just as soon as you look in your crystal ball and give me a forecast that predicts how many components all of you will sell over the next 12 months!”
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ecalling the several operations I have owned and operated, I know I’m not alone in being able to relate to this, because this scenario is a constant battle that exists in our industry. Sometimes we can liken a component operation (and almost any building operation) to an hour glass with demand on one end and supply on the other. In between, we have sales, design, and manufacturing – and often design seems to be just a small opening between the other two. It is the constant tension that usually puts up big thick silo walls between sales, design, and manufacturing, so that the three groups have an impact on either side of the demand/capacity equation. If your sales manager asked the question above, would your manufacturing team be able to give a straight answer? Would the response begin with all of the reasons why an answer is not possible (model mix, seasonality, labor, unpredictable downtime, quality issues, etc.)? Or, maybe the answer is a theoretical maximum output. (“One day, last decade, we produced X number of components, so that is my answer.”) This response will cause great frustration if the sales folks think “X” is a real number and start planning to try to create that much demand. The more likely answer probably will be something with the word “average” in the mix (“We average making Y components per day/week/month.”). Of course, the problem with driving demand to an average is that, roughly 50% of the time, the output will be too low to meet the expectations
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