Whether it is a major manufacturer or small make-to-order shop, having all of the right materials at the right place and at the right time, and in the hands of a trained worker, is the dream of every shop floor manager. Today, many manufacturers come closer to this dream through the incorporation of Lean manufacturing principals.

In a Lean system, the manufacturer strives to pull production from the consumer end in order to maximize value through the elimination of waste. That is to say, in the Lean system customer demand is used to advance the flow of shop resources/supplies and the delivery of product—on-hand inventories, and their associated value depreciations, are reduced if not eliminated. Manufacturing waste is purged from the process. (more…)

Sometimes scheduled overtime in manufacturing is inevitable. Other times, it’s simply wasted profitability through inefficient use of labor and poor capacity planning. In the former instance, there are certainly times when business is booming so much that there is simply not enough capacity to handle the load and overtime is scheduled. In the latter, it’s often more of a neglect of processes that run through the plant including time and attendance, materials handling, and/or poor production output/bad quality.

In any case, excessively scheduled overtime eats into profits that would otherwise be flowing into the company. It’s a direct cost that in many instances can be, and should be, avoided by simply fixing problems of process on the shop floor. For manufacturers, it’s always necessary to remember the principle of time-step accumulation. For every instance of a poorly crafted part, step-back occurs and manifold time must go back into the inevitable fulfillment of the order. What took X number of minutes or hours to produce, is now, because of inaccurate engineering or simple operator error, amplified by the additional Y time needed to finish it. (more…)