May 1997, Volume 14, No. 5 Facing Up to the New Realities of Global Manufacturing

According to MESA International (Pittsburgh, Pa.), a trade association for the manufacturing execution systems (MES) industry, you can visit the computer rooms and planning offices of many manufacturers today and find dated computer systems and time-worn management strategies which simply are inadequate for the new realities of global manufacturing. To combat this unnecessary obsolescence, MESA has developed a "white paper" to help manufacturers pull themselves — dragging and kicking, if need be — into the late 20th century and hopefully into the next millennium.

In an era of global markets and competition, the old manufacturing model has become a dinosaur. As the white paper explains, according to the old model, the more of a given product you could make at the lowest cost, while charging the highest price to your customers, the greater profit you could realize. This system pitted the needs of the supplier, which also wanted to make the greatest margin it could, against the needs of the customer, which wanted to buy the product for the lowest price.

This model caused manufacturers to produce as much of a product as they could in-house, to focus on product and to strive for an efficient, if static and unimaginative, organization. Once the "best" way to do something had been found, there was no need to reconsider it, since change was inherently disruptive and only gradual improvements in performance were enough to keep ahead of the competition.

Problem is, the world has moved on from that old model. Thanks to global markets, the emphasis has shifted toward forming partnerships with customers and suppliers; toward nimble, highly flexible organizations and processes which can produce exactly what the customer wants in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost of the old methods.

What's needed today are real-time systems which can plan, schedule and execute an operations strategy effectively. Agile manufacturing techniques are emerging that focus on meeting specific customer demands while improving performance at all phases of the demand fulfillment process.

To understand better the effect that a real-time manufacturing management software application can have on a plant, MESA's current white paper examines some of the key players involved in effective manufacturing operations, as described below.

Shop Floor Operators. Execution-driven applications provide operators with real-time dispatch lists that show work orders in priority sequence. The job sequence information is continuously adjusted as actual manufacturing operations take place or as priorities are changed. Operators input work order completion, with the system immediately showing availability for the next operation. Shop floor operators have access to detailed work order status screens that provide them with support requirements for each job, including engineering drawings, programs, tooling, materials and special instructions. They can communicate actual work order status, in real-time, to production control personnel and to the scheduling system. Information on jobs in queue, set-up, run and problem states can be entered and communicated continuously. Real-time communication of problems to production scheduling and support functions expedites problem resolution.

Production Schedulers. Scheduling personnel are able to easily change order priority, routings and schedules (due to alternate routings, engineering changes, quantity changes, rework and cancellations) and communicate these changes to the shop floor instantaneously. Schedulers have the capabilities to override the schedule and change an order's place in the job sequence, or group similar jobs to save set-up time. Work orders and routings can be downloaded from MRP systems or entered manually. Support function resource requirements, such as tools, documents and fixtures, can be easily imported into the system for communication directly to work center operators. Job status information facilitates their working with customer service, managers and supervisors to prioritize schedule changes. "What if" simulation capability allows them to test alternative scenarios prior to finalization of changes.

Support Groups. The manufacturing management system provides work order priority, location and requirements on a real-time basis to all support functions in order to maximize manufacturing throughput. The system supplies each support function — stock room, tool room, maintenance, engineering — with detailed plans of what to do and when to do it, on a minute-by-minute basis. Real-time alarms identify problem situations occurring on the shop floor, allowing support personnel to respond quickly. Support groups can input in advance when they are unable to meet scheduled requirements, providing information that automatically revises schedules.

Customer Service and Supervisors. The execution system provides customer service, supervisory and other personnel the work order status for any functional area within the plant. The system offers them multiple views of production status information, including historic, current and projected data. Customer service personnel can use production information to make sure new customer commitments can be met without impacting previous promise dates. Supervisors can use the information to make decisions on whether to employ alternate machines or work centers to relieve shop floor bottlenecks, and to identify problem order and material shortages.

Managers and Manufacturing Engineering. The system provides detailed data on individual work centers and tools for identification of performance improvement areas. Complete backlog analysis and trending, input/output control and throughput calculations provide the information needed to identify production bottlenecks. It also enables detailed analysis of queue, set-up, run and problem times so that the best opportunities for cycle time reductions can be pinpointed.

According to MESA, the impact that real-time manufacturing management systems can have on a company can be quite dramatic. For instance, such a company will become more responsive to its customers, better able to anticipate their requirements and provide them with high quality products in the shortest possible time. By achieving true competitive advantage in the global marketplace, a manufacturing company will enjoy increased market share and improved profitability — certainly results well worth the adoption of current technologies.

A copy of "Execution-driven Manufacturing Management for Competitive Advantage: White Paper # 5" is available from MESA International, 303 Freeport Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15215, (412) 781-9511, ; http://www.mesa.org.