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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
Adverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
September 2017 #10218 Page #38
Improve Your Production Processes and Say “NO” to Waste Part 7 in our TIMWOODS series Ben Hershey, President, Coach, & Mentor 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC
Reducing Over-Processing is a critical part of creating an efficient lean production/distribution company. As our friend Tim
Woods has been guiding us through our lumber yards, manufacturing operations, and offices, we’ve seen a lot of wastes. Now it’s time to address the second Big O – a very big source of waste which can be a significant drain on our businesses.
Over-Processing Overproduction is making products in too great a quantity or before actually needed, leading to excessive inventory (WIP/Work In Process). Likewise, over-processing is doing too much and taking too many steps. Although they are separate ideas, both can be thought of as two halves of the problem of “too much.” They are contrary to basic principles in Lean manufacturing which require that you make what the customer wants when they want it, pulling only what is ordered through your work flow. In addition, these wastes can obscure other problems within your processes.
Costs of the Waste of Over-Processing What are some of the costs? If you avoid addressing over-processing, it can: • Cause you to tie up your capital in stock, raw materials, WIP, and finished goods. • Require additional space on the production floor or in the lumber yard. • Necessitate people and equipment to move it around as well as containers for storage.
Causes of the Waste of Over-Processing When you walk in the yard or plant, why do you see so much overprocessing? Many times what I hear is, “this is how we have always done it!” Over the years, I have been to numerous companies that run huge batches of material, creating enormous amounts of WIP when they instead should reduce the batches, improve their flow, reduce lead time, and improve customer service. In general, over-processing is caused by: • Large batch sizes • Unstable schedules • Unreliable work processes • Unbalanced or mis-scheduled cells or departments • Working to a forecast/inaccurate information that is not actual demand. Like overproduction, there are logistical and psychological causes. Often we produce large batches because of long setups on some of our machines, so we try to maximize our throughput of these machines and use “economical batch quantities” to dictate how much material is processed rather than what the customer wants. Other times we do not have reliable suppliers and so we “stock-up” on the supply we need. And finally, we have unreliable processes and schedules which cause us to plan for delays, plan for disruptions, etc. PHONE: 800-289-5627
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