Jun 28 2014

40 Years on, the Barcode Has Turned Everything Into Information | Wired

“Without the barcode, FedEx couldn’t guarantee overnight delivery. The just-in-time supply chain logistics that allow Walmart to keep prices low would not exist, and neither would big-box stores. Toyota’s revolutionary kanban manufacturing system depends on barcodes. From boarding passes to hospital patients, rental cars to nuclear waste, barcodes have reduced friction like few other technologies in the world’s slide toward globalization.”

Source: www.wired.com

 

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

While this article exaggerates a bit, the fact is that the bar code is the first successful auto-ID technology, so successful in fact that more advanced technologies, like RFID or even QR-codes, have yet to displace it. There are barcodes on Kanbans, but you really cannot say that the system depends on them, because Kanbans were used early on without barcodes more than two decades.

The 40th anniversary of the barcode is an opportunity to remember, or learn, who invented it and why. This article does not credit the actual inventors, Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver, who patented it in 1952, but only supermarket executive Alan Haberman, who made its use practical to improve inventory tracking and speed up checkout. In 1974 he led an industry committee to adopt the barcode as a vehicle to implement a Universal Product Code or UPC. It is as much the story of the emergence of a standard as a story of technology.

In Manufacturing, barcodes are used almost everywhere to identify warehouse locations and stock keeping units, to validate picks, and to track component serial numbers. While celebrating the success and the usefulness of this technology, we should, however, remain aware of its limitations. Even in supermarkets, barcode reading remains a largely manual process. A human still has to wave around small items in front of a reader, or a reading gun in front of large items, and it often takes multiple attempts before you hear the beep confirming a successful read.

Fully automatic barcode reading is occasionally found in manufacturing operations where the environment is clean, with good lighting, high contrast, and a controlled orientation. QR codes are less demanding. They can be, for example, etched on the surface of a metal workpiece, and read inside the work enclosure of a machine-tool.

RFID tags hold the promise of full automatic reading at a distance. It has made them successful in public transportation passes like the Octopus card in Hong Kong or the Navigo card in Paris, as well as in electronic toll collection in the Fastrak system in California.

Barcodes are also limited to IDs and cannot be updated. As a consequence, they have to be used in the context of an information system that contains all the data keyed on the ID, which can be “the cloud” in a supply chain, or a local manufacturing execution system in a factory. By contrast, a high-end RFID tag can locally contain the entire bill of materials of a product moving down an assembly line, its current location in the process, and any measurements that may have been made on it at earlier operations. For a finished product, it can contain the entire maintenance history of a unit.

 

By • Press clippings • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Jun 27 2014

Fundamental failings in “Lean” procurement | Supply Chain Digital

A side-loading truck

“The famous Lean approach, adopted by companies all over the world, considers the expenditure of resources on anything that doesn’t create value for the end customer as waste and seeks to eliminate unnecessary processes within this framework.

The concern, however, is that companies are losing out by either not fully understanding the practice or not committing themselves enough to the change in thinking adopting it requires.”

Source: www.supplychaindigital.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

The points in the article are valid, and could be summarized by saying that, in procurement/supply chain management/logistics, efficiency should never be pursued at the expense of effectiveness.

The more fundamental mistake, however, is the half-baked notion that “anything that doesn’t create value for the end customer is waste.”  Any business activity involves tasks the customer is never aware of, let alone values, and a narrow-minded focus on what customers are “willing to pay for” blinds managers to the need and the benefits of, for example, supporting suppliers.

Customer willingness to pay is not an actionable criterion to identify waste. An activity is waste if, and only if, your performance does not degrade in any way when you stop doing it. If eliminating it does not degrade your quality, increase your costs, delay your delivery, put your people at risk, or make your employees want to quit, then it is waste. But, even with a proper perspective on waste, eliminating it only improves only efficiency, not effectiveness. It’s about getting things done right, not getting the right things done.In a manufacturing company, procurement/supply chain management/logistics is the pit crew supporting production, and the business benefits of doing this job better dwarf any savings achieved through efficiency.

Reducing order fulfillment lead times, introducing new products, or customizing them helps the business grow. And it may require spending more rather than less on the supply chain, for example by moving trucks that are not 100% full.

By • Press clippings • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Jun 25 2014

5S: It’s not About What is Done but Who Does It

In yet another discussion of 5S in the TPS Principles and Practice discussion group on LinkedIn, Ryan Ripley asked about the real meaning of the 3rd S, “shine.”  As several contributors pointed out, the 3rd S in 5S is Seiso, which translates to Clean, not Shine. As discussed in an earlier post, translating the 5Ss by five English words that begin with S is a misguided effort that results in systematic mistranslations.

For the first 4Ss, an earlier, imperfect but more accurate translation that I heard in the UK was R.I.C.K., which stood for:

  1. Remove — take all the items that are not routinely needed out of the work space.”
  2. Identify — assign and label locations for all routinely needed items.
  3. Clean — clean the equipment and the floors.
  4. Keep clean — enforce the daily discipline of doing 1 through 3.

I would add Second-Nature for the 5th S, because it means practicing the first four until they are assimilated to the point that enforcement is no longer necessary. This makes the acronym R.I.C.K.S. The translation as Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain is not remotely accurate and should be abandoned rather than plumbed for intellectual depth.

What is essential about the 3rd S, “Cleaning” is not what the task is but who does it. A janitor will wipe the oil off the floor and that’s it, the job is done. If the operator does the cleaning, then the hand guides the eyes and draws attention to details like frayed cables, broken dials, or puddles that weren’t there before. It works as an early warning system, and a stepping stone towards autonomous maintenance.

A challenge in organizing for operators to do this is that it is not direct production work. Much of what we do in designing operator jobs is making sure that they are relieved of all tasks that do not directly move the product towards completion. That is why, for example, assemblers should not have to unpack parts but instead should have parts unpacked by others and presented to them within arm’s reach, oriented for ease of assembly.

In the same logic, you might imagine that it makes sense to have others pick up after the operators, putting each tool back where it belongs and cleaning the work space. I remember a production manager in a car plant responding to the idea of setting aside the last 5 minutes of each shift to 5S by saying “that would cost us three cars.”

In reality, of course, I never heard of production performance going down as a result of doing 5S, but it is not a priori obvious.

By • Tools • 4 • Tags: , ,

Jun 23 2014

Ex-Toyota exec preaches production gospel to aspiring supplier | Automotive News

Paula Lillard is now the bright hope for nth/works. She has come to help instill the Toyota Production System — or TPS — for a supplier that urgently wants it.

Source: www.autonews.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

This article paints a picture of what implementing Lean is really all about. It starts from the business needs of a parts supplier to the household appliance industry that wants to move into auto parts, where tolerances are tighter.And implementation is centered around what Lillard calls giving the plant “a little TLC.”

According to the article, her first task was “to ask employees to write and create step-by-step instructions on how to do their jobs.”  This is a far cry from all the nonsense about starting with 5S. It does not require value-stream maps, and it cannot be done in so-called “Kaizen events.”

Instead, it is patient work that requires time and perseverance.There is a TPS twist on work instructions — using A3 sheets posted above workstations rather than 3-ring binders on shelves — but such instructions  have been recognized as essential since the 19th century, and have been part of the industrial engineering curriculum since its inception, decades before Toyota was started.

Yet,  the article implies that  a stamping parts manufacturer in the American Midwest survived for 70 years without them. Having seen many plants with non-existent or ineffective job instructions, I believe it, and it raises many questions.

By • Press clippings • 2 • Tags: , ,

Jun 21 2014

Poka-Yoke in User Interface Design | Six Revisions

 

“Poka-yoke is a Japanese term that means “mistake-proofing”. It surfaced in the 1960s, and was first applied in the car manufacturing industry. Poka-yoke is credited to industrial engineer Shigeo Shingo.”

Source: sixrevisions.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:

That IT specialists should be interested in the Poka-Yoke concept is natural. There are, however, consequential inaccuracies In the way it is described in many English-language sources, including Wikipedia.

The example given as the first Poka-Yoke is a redesign of a switch assembly process that involved presenting springs on a placeholders so that the operator would not forget to insert one.

Assuming this is a true example, it has two characteristics that make it different from the other examples given in Shingo’s book or in Productivity Press’s big red book of Poka-Yoke.

First, having a placeholder does not physically prevent the operator from making a mistake. A classical example of a system that does is one that puts a lid on every bin except the one the operator needs to pick from.

Second, this example adds labor to the operation, which means that the preparation step of placing the springs in the placeholder is likely to be by-passed under pressure. This is why it is a requirement for a Poka-Yoke not to add labor to the process.

For the same reasons, a multi-step deletion process in a software interface does not qualify as a Poka-Yoke. If you do multiple deletes, you end up pressing the buttons in rapid succession, occasionally deleting items you didn’t intend to, while cursing the inconvenience of these multiple steps.

Having different, incompatible plugs certainly made it impossible to plug the keyboard into a port for an external disk. USB, however, was an improvement over this, because, with it, the machine figures out the purpose of the connection. A connector that you can insert in any orientation is even better. It saves you time, and there is no wrong way to plug it in. This is a genuine Poka-Yoke.

There are other, useful approaches that make mistakes less likely without preventing them outright. Don Norman and Jacob Nielsen call them “usability engineering.” They should certainly be used in user interface design, but not confused with Poka-Yoke.

By • Blog clippings • 1 • Tags: , ,

Jun 20 2014

Supplier Assessment — It’s The Gut That Counts Says Nobu Morita | Pat Moody

“Beyond Report Cards, Beyond Balance Sheets?  When Evaluating Suppliers, Why It’s Your Gut That Counts.

What’s the best way for supply management and manufacturing pros to evaluate current and potential suppliers? And is there only one “best way?”  There are hundreds of supplier assessment tools, books and checklists, but there is no single standards committee that absolutely dead nuts certifies what’s out there, especially when your supplier is located two continents and three oceans and four hand-offs away!”

Source: sites.google.com

Michel Baudin‘s comments:
When assessing a manufacturing organization, I always look for information from three sources:

  1.  Data, and preferably raw rather than cooked into metrics by recipes unknown to me.
  2. Direct observation of production.
  3. What people tell me, which may or may not agree with the data and what I sense on the shop floor.

I don’t see Morita as disagreeing with this, but I think we must be careful about basing decision on a “gut feel,” which may be no more than the expression of prejudices you didn’t even know you had.

Still, when your gut feel tells you that something is not quite right, it often is. I wouldn’t base my decision on it, but I would take it as a signal that further investigation is needed.

By • Blog clippings • 3 • Tags: , , ,

«< 62 63 64 65 66 >»