Ultimately, the more frequently you’re conducting changeovers, the more efficient you need to be. Consider a pit stop in motorsports races: The pit crew is able to service the vehicle in a matter of seconds because each team member knows his or her exact responsibilities and everyone knows exactly how and where tools and parts are organized. One thing you don’t want is to be searching for equipment parts during a changeover. This system involves tracking performance and data visually to ensure coordination and that necessary parts are in the right place. The 5S methodology, developed in Japan, is considered one of the techniques that enabled just-in-time manufacturing. Many facilities don’t maintain a detailed checklist for maintenance and operational aspects. If a facility’s maintenance team knows a particular changeover took three hours, but the scheduler estimated an hour and a half, they will always be behind on production if they don’t coordinate with each other. With make-to-order production, open and frequent communication between departments is essential. Pit stop mentality: communication and collaboration With this inventory system, products can arrive a few hours or a day before the changeover, so keeping every ingredient in storage at all times isn’t sustainable, especially with a large number of SKUs. This is why proper planning is especially critical with an MTO approach. When a new SKU order arrives, a company needs access to real-time information in order to efficiently conduct a changeover and collaborate with more suppliers, if needed. Rather than maintaining a large inventory of raw ingredients in storage, making to order requires management of just-in-time (JIT) delivery, where the facility receives goods as close as possible to when they are actually needed. The shift to an MTO approach also marks a shift in how raw materials are sourced. Just-in-time delivery and reducing finished product inventory Of course, how this looks will vary from facility to facility, but the gist is the same: Ensure there is always a processing or packaging line running and minimize idle time during changeovers. Ideally, by the time packaging is back down, processing is ready to ramp back up on a new SKU. One way to streamline changeovers is to schedule packaging lines to run as you make product, so that packaging can continue as you shut down the production line for cleaning. That’s why optimizing changeovers is critical in make-to-order production. Each minute of each changeover now carries more weight, because the changeovers themselves have more opportunities to set your production efficiency back. Now imagine an MTO-driven facility that conducts changeovers much more frequently. Since MTO production is subject to the fluctuations of customer demand, it means more frequent changeovers to produce various SKUs whenever needed. As changeovers increase, changeover time becomes more significant.Īn MTS operation may only conduct changeovers every few weeks, in which case a three-hour changeover time, while not necessarily ideal, isn’t very consequential. The MTS approach is more predictable: it operates under the assumption that you have a specific inventory to fill and repeats the process accordingly on a schedule. But make-to-order production requires specific planning and increased changeovers, so if you’re adding or increasing MTO processing, let’s review what you need to know.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |