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by Jeff Moad, MA Editorial Staff   | Abstract: | As manufacturers attempt to use lean techniques to streamline activities beyond the shop floor, they're seeing that the task isn't so easy and requires big cultural changes. |
It's a normal Wednesday afternoon, and your plant is humming along. Suddenly one of your managers receives a call from a key supplier: Due to an equipment failure, the supplier will be unable to deliver the parts you were counting on to complete next week's orders. Does your organization quickly and efficiently respond to this event, launching a planned and documented series of actions, each the responsibility of an assigned owner? Or does the call provoke a sudden, chaotic fire drill, with supply managers stepping on one another, wasting effort and critical hours before finally coming up with a fix? Unfortunately, at far too many manufacturing companies, that scenario produces a chaotic and wasteful response. Though manufacturers have spent the past few years creating lean, repeatable processes within the production environment to respond quickly and efficiently to events such as changes in demand, many companies have not paid nearly as much attention to the processes that surround and feed the plant with materials, orders, new products, and critical information. [Click to continue] |