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Technology Watch Knowledge Base |
Chemicals Manufacturing Optimisation, Vickers Laboratories, Leeds, UK |
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PROBLEM STATEMENT |
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At the outset of the programme the following goals were identified for effecting improvements in operations at Vickers: · Better coordination between manufacturing and supplying · Close coupled interaction between orders, production and delivery · More effective scheduling and planning During the benchmarking at Vickers and in associated meetings it became increasingly clear that production scheduling is a significant bottleneck in the business process. Up to two days per week is spent: · Scheduling production against customer orders · Interrogating the production plan · Requesting delivery dates and times · Re-scheduling new and urgent orders. These activities constitute a significant interruption to regular business activity for Steve Foster, Operations manager. |
Currently production planning is shown on a single planning board in Operations Team Co-ordinator’s office. Input is generated through computer generated manufacturing / packing requests which are rationalised into a logical, cost effective production schedule and entered on the board. It was felt that time is wasted on frequent updating of the planning board and fielding the constant requests for production status updates on individual orders. This in turn causes friction between the customer service staff and manufacturing. The benchmark confirmed Steve Fosters’ view that: · The planning board system needed to be updated · Information on job status should be automatically generated and freely available without interruption to work · Simple planning software, linked to the existing COBOL programme was wanted |
IMPROVEMENT APPROACH |
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Several opportunities to improve value added were been identified, but not fully estimated, as some further business data would be required. The increase in value added will significantly raise current value added per and contribute to increased profitability. The E solutions company Webaspx were confident that they could develop the software but identified critical success factors for a smooth introduction: · Ownership and buy-in from the operators, in particular the IT manager and production manager. · Electronic system to mirror the paper based system currently used · No major changes to the way Vickers staff operate. Steve Williams of Webaspx spent two further meetings with key staff identifying all the elements in Vickers’ production planning production monitoring/managing processes. |
He asked the Vickers IT manager what he wanted from an IT rational within the company. This planning and discussion phase went a long way to build up trust between Vickers and the project, gaining buy-in and commitment to the programme that was to be developed. The result of the dialogue was the development of a prototype of Production Assistant Planner that replicates the familiar formats and images used in the order forms and planning board. Drag and drop planning software, running a Windows platform, was built by Webaspx and demonstrated to Vickers. It was essential at this stage to ensure that it met their requirements for simplicity and consistency with their current working methods and equipment. After further programming development a fully working software programme was installed at Vickers and left with them to trial over a three week period using manual entries before connecting to their COBOL driven system. |
BENEFITS |
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Production Assistant Planner was linked to Vickers’ COBOL driven software in during October, enabling automatic downloads of production status in a real time environment and instant access to the timing and status of every job on the system. In this way, as information is updated into the planner, it becomes visible to all staff using the COBOL system. After a full working three-week trial a final meeting was organised for mid-November to review progress and to iron out any unforeseen bugs. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) was increased, Stock Turns of storage were reduced and OTIF improved by several percentage points. This equated to more throughput being achieved, less capital being held in product and customer complaints reduced. In sales terms is equivalent to 100 keuros per year and translates to a pay back of 5.3 months on a total project cost of 43.9keuros. In addition, there will be a once off saving from reduction of stock levels as the software is becomes fully operational. |
As Production Assistant Planner comes into use and is generally accepted by the staff, there are a number of benefits that will become available because of the way the programme records and stores all the information relating to resource allocation and time spent on each job. The following additional measures will prove useful in optimising production efficiency: · Measure job times · Measure re-works that often go unrecorded · Analyse most appropriate vessels for different jobs · Analyse operator expertise on different jobs · Help plan vessel and operator allocation from empirical data. |
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