Author: David Dehne

  • White Paper: Demand-Driven Manufacturing Metrics that Drive Action

    White Paper: Demand-Driven Manufacturing Metrics that Drive Action

    Demand-Driven Manufacturing Metrics that Drive Action addresses the key elements of demand, or pull-based manufacturing: Managing constraints and synchronizing activities to improve production flow and, ultimately, throughput. In doing so, this white paper lays the foundation for the Demand-Driven Manufacturing Metrics for Action Guide– a resource that outlines the operational metrics that you can take action on to improve your operations and supply chain performance.

  • Kanban Series White Paper: Common Barriers to Moving from Push to Pull Manufacturing

    Kanban Series White Paper: Common Barriers to Moving from Push to Pull Manufacturing

    This resource addresses the following challenges:

    • Organizations initiate material replenishment automation programs without properly analyzing processes and priorities for internal and external stakeholders.
    • Manufacturers are unsure about their current replenishment capabilities within ERP and other systems, and are unsure whether to fix, buy or build a solution to gain the capabilities they need.
    • Disruptions in leadership and a change-averse environment can create barriers to improved production flow and automating processes.
    • Unanswered questions regarding whether a replenishment solution can enhance flow and enable continuous improvements.

  • Demand-Driven Technologies Evolved

    Demand-Driven Technologies Evolved

    demand-driven manufacturingBy John Maher

    When I first began instituting demand-driven practices in the late 90s, we were into creating pull, eliminating waste, and getting on a path of continuous improvement. Technology at the time was seen as an inhibitor rather than an enabler. Most people active in Constraints Management and Lean Manufacturing were abandoning their technology and going to purely manual solutions. I always believed that technology was important to get the most out of the system and to make it scalable, however, in the late 90s, the lack of technologies that enabled pull made manual the only logical choice.

    One of the more fascinating developments in demand-driven enablement has been the shift of demand-driven manufacturing back to technology as an enabler rather than an inhibitor. There is recognition today that technology has to play a significant role in eliminating waste and synchronizing operations and extended supply chains. Along with this trend, the creation of open ERP systems that are easily integrated with service-oriented architecture allows companies to leverage the system they already have and benefit from today’s best-of-breed, demand-driven solutions through seamless, real-time integration. Finally, the web-based, SaaS revolution has made this process more cost effective, with expensive internal services now “downloaded” to the software provider, freeing up IT and manufacturing teams to focus on what matters. The digitization of demand-driven practices has, in effect, opened up companies’ ability to manage inventory and constraints more effectively; free up capacity; control operating expenses; drive flow; dampen variability; and create innovations to meet customer demand.

    Based on decades in this business, I have found that demand-driven manufacturers realize the most benefit when they keep their eyes on the prize: Each day, they stay focused on demand-driven behaviors and remain disciplined in their efforts. It can be a difficult road. But it is my hope that this conversation will validate why demand-driven matters and inspire you on your journey each day. Until next time, keep it Lean!

     

    Additional resources on this topic:

    White Paper: How Technology Will Connect Your Enterprise and Create the Demand-Driven Factory of the Future – Today

    White Paper: Why Become More Demand-Driven? Responding to Customer Needs

    Article: What is Demand-Driven Manufacturing?

  • If it’s Not Real Time Data, It’s Old Data

    If it’s Not Real Time Data, It’s Old Data

    visual factoryWe have so much real-time data around us in our daily routines. A barista starts to prepare my order the moment that I purchase my daily coffee. I instantly know how close I am to the speed limit thanks to my car’s speedometer. And I see an accurate count down of the number of minutes before my computer turns off due to a drained battery. Since all of this real-time data is available in our day-to-day lives, shouldn’t we expect the same for data we use in our manufacturing organizations?

    Countless times I have walked into customer sites on Day 1 and seen old data everywhere. I have seen four walls of a conference room covered with 8 ½” by 11” printed reports, most of which were multiple weeks old. Or users that explain that they perform analysis based off of desktop spreadsheet files, with manual data loads. In each of these cases, people are operating off of old data, even if it was updated just a few hours ago. If my speedometer had that same delay, I would have a lot more speeding tickets!

    Old Data is Just… Old Data

    Manufacturers today are asking themselves how they can do better and be better. They realize that to be competitive, they should look inside the factory first and explore their own processes to find areas for improvement. If they analyze their data to see what it shows about their operations, they tend think that any data to go off of is better than no data, right? Not always, I say.

    Based on how fast your environment changes, it could be detrimental to make decisions off of old data. Since the pace of business has increased for manufacturers, thanks to both technology and complexity, so too should the pace at which data is collected and made available to make informed decisions. For example, consider everything that can happen in the span of an hour:

    • Purchasing finds out that a truck shipment of raw materials will be delayed two days due to weather.
    • A new customer puts in a rush online order double the size of previous months.
    • Maintenance begins fixing a problem on a constraint resource that is estimated to take at least a couple of hours.

    Wouldn’t your organization want to know about all of these situations as soon as it could? Certainly. Keep in mind, however, that as more and more data is available, you’ll need to discern if, when, and how you take action. That is, you’ll need to separate knowing that events occur versus reacting to them right away. Each event could immediately impact your organization’s priorities, but you also don’t want to be jumpy and let every event disrupt your overall process. The important thing is that you are aware and that you have the right information at hand to make necessary decisions.

    Better yet, your systems can also be aware of this same event data and alert you only to the issues that require your intervention. Technology solutions for manufacturers should be able to take real-time data, assess it against other conditions and values, and then notify you to respond only to the events that need your attention. This is the nature of demand-driven manufacturing – since the focus is on overall production flow, you only need to address those issues that disrupt flow. The rest is probably just normal “noise” – or what becomes a normal day for a manufacturer.

    Manual Reporting Makes Data Stale

    So how did we get to the point where so many manufacturers are not using real-time information? Thankfully, manufacturing technology is catching up to provide all of the information and analytics that companies seek in an automated, real-time manner. Organizations have always had the desire for information and reports, but they’ve commonly only had manual methods as options. Consider the volume of reporting that a typical manufacturing company does on a recurring basis – that’s a lot of manual reporting happening based on non-real time data. Think of the time drain that both the manual data collection and report running put on a company. If it takes an analyst only two hours to run a report, that means they are already using information that’s at least two hours old.

    If you run reports on yesterday’s manually collected data, then you will only have information about yesterday. Further, we will still need a clear, straightforward way to display that information to users. I know my car’s current speed based on the easy-to-read dashboard, for example.  If we demand that our organizations collect real-time data – and we have a tool like a visual factory system to display this information – then we have a powerful platform from which to understand what is happening today and what to prepare for tomorrow within operations. In the next blog, we will pick up on this topic of how to use historical data in a meaningful way, but in the meantime, send me your comments and questions.

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