Information Technology Archives

Jan 30 2021

Of Bubbles and Arrows

[The featured image is an ISOTYPE from Marie Neurath (1936)]

Maps of symbols connected by lines are the most common form of graphic communication about operations, next to bar charts, pie charts, and time series. The symbols may be a variety of pictograms and there may be different types of lines, including arrows, double-headed arrows with a variety of arrowheads, with dashed lines of varying thicknesses…

This is about what you can do with such maps beyond communicating, and the challenges of mapping systems that don’t fit on one slide. It is also about improving current practices.

By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 5 • Tags: Database, Graph, Map, Network, Operations, Operations Management, Operations Research, Simulation, Statechart, Visualization, VSM

Jul 29 2020

The BOM Rap (Part III) — Scaling Up

The BOM Rap recommended restricting the centrally managed part of the Bill Of Materials (BOM) of an assembly plant to the Gozinto (“goes-into”) structure of the items. Building on this, Part II used a small toy example to introduce the Vàzsonyi procedure as a tool usable on a laptop computer to extract useful information from BOMs for use in assembly improvement projects, together with graphic visualization tools. Here, we apply these tools on the larger, more realistic BOM, of the Legotractors from our Leanix games.

By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 0 • Tags: Bill of Materials, BOM, Gozinto, Master Data Management

Jul 9 2020

The BOM Rap (Part II) — The Vàzsonyi procedure

The BOM Rap recommended restricting the centrally managed part of the Bill Of Materials (BOM) of an assembly plant to the Gozinto (“goes-into”) structure of the items — that is, triplets with an item ID, the ID of an item it goes into, and the quantity used, together with an item list carrying units of measure.

This is the common core to all uses of the BOM, to which engineers, production planners, or accountants can attach additional data for their own purposes.

As discussed in The BOM Rap, BOMs are usually kept in ERP systems that only support their uses in their transaction menus, and production engineers often need to do more.

By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 3 • Tags: Bill of Materials, BOM, Master Data Management

Mar 31 2019

Industry 4.0 versus Manufacturing Improvement (Part 1)

There is a lesson that manufacturing leaders seem determined to learn the hard way: flooding factories with new technology does not improve their performance.

Roger Smith learned it at GM in the 1980s. Elon Musk, for all his other achievements, admitted by tweet to making the same mistake at Tesla last year.

To really improve manufacturing performance, you start with, as Crispin Vincenti-Brown put it, with “what happens when the guy picks up the wrench.” You work with that person to make the work easier, faster, safer, and less prone to deviations and errors. In doing this, you apply, as needed, technology you can afford that operators can work with.

This is hard work but it pays off. It is a key lesson learned from Toyota, TPS, and many companies that implemented it under the “Lean” label. But it’s an eat-your-vegetables message. The lure of a technological shortcut is irresistible.

By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 17 • Tags: Digital Transformation, Industry 4.0, Lean, TPS

Aug 1 2018

The BOM Rap

Why bother with a yawn-inducing topic like bills of materials (BOMs)? Bring it up with manufacturing professionals and their eyes glaze over instantly. And the Lean literature is mute on the subject. I even asked Michael Ballé for his input on the subject and he responded that he had none to offer.

Yet everyone involved with assembly agrees that BOMs are at the core of their activity, that BOMs have chronic accuracy issues, that the workarounds to these inaccuracies impair the companies’ ability to update and customize products, and that BOM maintenance hogs resources. Perhaps it’s worth giving the subject some thought and having a conversation about it.

By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 9 • Tags: Bill of Materials, BOM, CAD, ERP, Process Planning, Production planning, Work instructions

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.

By Michel Baudin • Information Technology • 1 • Tags: Continuous improvement, industrial engineering, Process Instructions, Standard Work, Video Time Studies

Information Technology

Of Bubbles and Arrows

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The BOM Rap (Part III) — Scaling Up

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The BOM Rap (Part II) — The Vàzsonyi procedure

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Industry 4.0 versus Manufacturing Improvement (Part 1)

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The BOM Rap

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Using videos to improve operations | Part 8 – Video Repositories

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Information Technology

Of Bubbles and Arrows

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The BOM Rap (Part III) — Scaling Up

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The BOM Rap (Part II) — The Vàzsonyi procedure

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Industry 4.0 versus Manufacturing Improvement (Part 1)

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The BOM Rap

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Using videos to improve operations | Part 8 – Video Repositories

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