Manufacturing

How do I know if the solution can help me?

• Would you benefit from a significantly lower production lead time? DO you think that your inventory levels in production are higher than expectation leading to unnecessary capital blocked? Would you like to expose significant hidden capcity in your plant? If yes, .. then most probably you will benefit from applying TOC concept in manufacturing in your company.

What is the constraint in my factory?

• Just ask the person who has to run to ship the final goods which department he has to mostly run to for delayed orders. Chances are that’s where the constraint is.

What do I do once I know the constraint?

• First you should ensure that the actual touch time (the time someone is physically working on the item) is very small compared to the total production lead time. If that is the case you need to ensure that you are not flooding the shopfloor with orders as soon as you receive them. Release them only half the current lead time before the due date.

Releasing so late ! That’s going to make my orders even more late!

• Do you know that he number 1 reason why orders are late is because of the confusion in managing large WIP. By ensuring right release of order on shop floor you can substantially reduce the WIP which will mean that the production lead time also goes down – by 50% ! And the chances of you achieving your DDP becomes much higher.

The solution to ensure on time performance in significantly less time is called Drum-Buffer-Rope solution