To reach your full manufacturing efficiency potential, you must combine the seven essential processes with a company culture that promotes the following core values:
Value #1 – Planning Settings
An efficient manufacturing company is devoted to using planning settings instead of manual planning and expediting.
Manual planning and expediting are inherently inefficient. Manual planning is tedious, time-consuming, non-timely, prone to shortages and over-stocking, and relies on job chaining, BOM explosions, and other MRP workarounds. Expediting favors one job at a time at the expense of many other jobs and to overall shop throughput.
In a company culture that values planning settings, high priority is given to maintaining item MRP settings – Lead Days allocations, Job Days allocations, order policies, Monthly Demand, and Supply Days targets. Shop managers adhere to the master schedule with job release and work center priorities. As a result, customer orders will be fulfilled quickly and reliably while keeping inventory and WIP to a minimum.
Value #2 – BOM and Job Accuracy
An efficient manufacturing company is devoted to maintaining accurate BOMs and job details.
BOM inaccuracy flows through to job detail and is the source of myriad problems, including erroneous PO generation, shortages, job delays, assembly errors, costing errors, and inventory errors.
In a company culture that values BOM accuracy there is no tolerance for errors in BOM specifications or job details. Whenever errors are encountered, they are fixed immediately in the job and in the BOM so that future jobs will not encounter problems. Any customization that is made out on the shop floor is immediately reflected in job details to insure accurate PO generation and inventory updating.
Value #3 – Inventory Accuracy
An efficient manufacturing company is devoted to maintaining an accurate inventory.
An accurate inventory is essential because stock on hand is the driver of MRP generation, job release, and the shipment planner.
In a company culture that values inventory accuracy there is no tolerance for inventory errors. All inventory processes are performed correctly and in real time. Whenever an error is encountered, it is fixed immediately. Mass physical inventories are avoided in favor of systematic cycle counting, especially for items with variable job usage.
Value #4 – Real-Time Processing
An efficient manufacturing company is devoted to performing all workflow processes in real time.
Delaying job issues, labor updating, and other processes until job finish is highly inefficient because you never know the status of work center queues or job priorities. As a result, expediting is required to meet job required dates, which favors some jobs at the expense of all other jobs and the shop as a whole. Furthermore, processing delays also result in incomplete job receipt costs that adversely affect inventory value and cost of goods sold.
In a company culture that values real-time processing, materials are issued to jobs when sequences are started and labor is updated as sequences are finished.
