Mar 30 2016
I own two dishwashers in two homes, different models from the same brand, bought in the same store, and both on a service contract. For the first one, the model number is SHE55R56UC; for the second one, SHE65T55UC. Today, we needed help on the first one, but customer service shipped us parts for the second one, which the repair technician discovered when unpacking them.
Feb 28 2016
Whether you manage operations with paper and pencil as in 1920 or use the state of the art in information technology (IT), you need clean data. If you don’t have it, you will suffer all sorts of dysfunctions. You will order materials you already have or don’t need, and be surprised by shortages. You will make delivery promises you can’t keep, and ship wrong or defective products. And you will have no idea what works and what doesn’t in your plant.
I have never seen a factory with perfect data, and perhaps none exists. Dirty data is the norm, not the exception, and the reason most factories are able to ship anything at all is that their people find ways to work around the defects in their data, from using expediters to find parts that aren’t where the system thought they were, to engineers who work directly with production to make sure a technical change is implemented. Mei-chen Lo, of Kainan University in Taiwan, proposed a useful classification of the issues with data quality. What I would like to propose here is pointers on addressing them.
Jan 26 2016
A free guide that you can download from ERP Focus makes vendor selection the first of an 11-step implementation process, while defining success is the last. In other words, they have you choose who you buy from before having a clear idea of what you are trying to accomplish.
It reminds me of a meeting at a client site where ERP implementation was about to begin. “This train has left the station,” I was told. The purpose of the meeting was to draw a “Value Stream Map” for the whole plant, in preparation for ERP, and the participants included managers from Manufacturing, Quality, Production Control, Maintenance, Purchasing, Sales, and Engineering.
Dec 6 2015
This is a translation of Bodo Wiegand’s latest newsletter, about Lean in Germany, followed by my comments:
This week I was with a company that is on its way to implement industry 4.0. All machines were networked. The manager could see from his desk which machines were running and which were not. All data were collected centrally and also shown locally to the machine operator. The trend was easy to see. One third of the machines had a malfunction. With an average OEE of 62%, the machines do not always run.
“As long as we buy new machines, we have to live with this,” was his answer to my question.
But, it was not only the newest, but also the older machines that don’t need to be smeared with oil and dirty, even even while generating chips. Provided on request, the Fire-Fighting-factor reported to us by the maintenance technicians was above 75%. The chief knew exactly: 76.6%. An OEE of 62% and 76.6% Firefighting means in plain language: In this business, there is no stable processes.
But what drives intelligent managers then to link his whole company, only to find that the processes are unstable? With some thought they could have discovered this without networking and invested first in stabilizing the processes. Introducing Industry 4.0 For industry on unstable processes will fail. The crucial question: how I manage to stabilize the processes and avoid unplanned shutdowns?
Apr 19 2015
Three years ago, a previous post made the case for the key approach to nomenclature, as opposed to the obsolete “smart” numbering systems. In the key approach, the only job of a part number is to be a unique item identifier, through which all relevant information can be retrieved from a database. But you still need to think what items you want to have unique IDs for.
Aug 15 2017
Using videos to improve operations | Part 8 – Video Repositories
The seven articles I posted four years ago on the art of using videos to improve operations included no pointers on what to do with the videos once you have them. This concern may seem premature in a manufacturing world where video recordings of operations are still rare, process instructions are in dusty binders and obsolete, customization specs come in the form of all-uppercase text from a 30-year old dot matrix printer with a worn-out ribbon, engineering project records reside in individual employees’ laptops, and management expects IT issues to be resolved by implementing a new, all-in-one ERP system.
In everyday life, on the other hand, videos are already in common use to explain how to pry loose a stuck garbage disposal, remove a door lock, change a special bulb in car headlight, or neatly cut a mango into cubes. You just describe your problem in a Youtube search, and up come videos usually shot and narrated by handy amateurs, and sometimes pros. It is particularly useful for tasks involving motion with key points that are difficult to explain with words or still images. The manufacturing world will eventually catch up.
Continue reading…
Share this:
Like this:
By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 1 • Tags: Continuous improvement, industrial engineering, Process Instructions, Standard Work, Video Time Studies