October 1996 € Volume 6 € Number 10

Solutions

Harnessing The Dragon

The one constant of manufacturing in the '90s is change. Managed well it can be a powerful force, unlocking productivity and leading to new opportunities; managed poorly, it can become a monster, sapping the strength of an organization. Alcatel Network Systems, Inc. in Richardson, Texas was determined to harness that force, so they called on Cincom Systems, Inc. of Cincinnati to help them do it.

In 1991 Alcatel Network Systems was formed through the merger of Rockwell International's Network Transmission Systems Division and Alcatel's existing Network Systems business, centered in Raleigh, N.C. The new organization became part of one of the world's largest suppliers of communications systems. It also inherited two separate production systems, two management information systems and two corporate cultures.

"After the merger, we were faced with integrating two unique business units," notes Bob Wickersham, senior director operations business management for Alcatel. "Our goal was to present a single face to the customer, move products between sites based on capacity, and present a single face to our suppliers."

There were numerous hurdles to overcome along the way. "We were replacing not only two MRP systems, but two of every business system that existed within the new Alcatel Network Systems, including order management, project tracking, personnel systems, financial systems and engineering support systems," says Wickersham. "We were literally starting from scratch and redesigning the entire business process during a period of business growth and integration."

That's where Cincom came in. Alcatel realized it needed an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could unify its disparate facilities, yet do it in a way that would liberate, not straightjacket, the hard-won manufacturing and business savvy of its different units. Cincom's CONTROL is an integrated business information system that supports manufacturing, distribution, and financial management with a common base of information and management procedures. Tuned especially to the needs of highly engineered product manufacturers, CONTROL's modules cover business processes for manufacturing, financial, order management, procurement and sales.

"The business systems were in place to run the existing businesses, but not for the new company that resulted from the merger," recalls Wickersham. Alcatel relies on a network of focused factories, each with particular product expertise and manufacturing capabilities, to provide all the equipment, services and technology required for its comprehensive telecommunication system products. The information system needed for this manufacturing environment had to link all facilities to support effective interaction between plants.

"When we implemented Cincom's software across both business units, we went from a business that operated on seven different platforms, with two of the primary business systems operating on an outsourced platform, to a single Digital 7600 cluster," says Wickersham. "Today we employ centralized processing, with each site on-line 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"We were primarily a kitting push operation before," he continues. "Now we've gone to pull process with backflushing. Today we have point-of-use replenishment, literally a kanban-type process. We are moving from engineer-to-order to assemble-to-order. We're using statistical forecasts for planning, whereas before we primarily used planning models."

Alcatel now operates as a multisite environment, and there's a great deal of interaction between the different plants. "Now that we are on a single multisite business system, our requirements literally go through overnight," says Wickersham. "The communication is greatly improved.

"Our sales are up significantly this year and we are expecting continued improvement through next year. During the same period of time we've been actively reducing our product lead times and component lead times," says Wickersham. "Everyone in each plant is operating on one integrated business system. We spend our time managing the business rather than reconciling the data between the different systems and figuring out how the various sites can communicate with each other." n

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Recreational Manufacturer Wins Quality Award With Design of Experiments

K2 Corp., a division of Anthony Industries, located in Vashon, Wash., manufactures skis under the brand names of K2 and Olin. K2's ski design had long been distinguished by a torsion box construction, in which fiberglass is wrapped around the core for added strength. Recently, however, K2 needed to change the exterior design of the skis to meet the new market demand for "cap" skis. Cap skis feature a smooth, encased look.

From a manufacturing standpoint, the cap ski requires an entirely different construction method from the square version. Because the new design doesn't have squared sides, the plastic material on top of the ski must be wrapped around and brought down to seal to the top edge of a steel shank.

When K2 re-tooled the existing molds and began manufacturing the cap skis, they ran into a number of processing problems. The new skis exhibited dimples, blisters, and other surface problems. The top layer of the skin-tight plastic casing made every blemish all too visible, and impossible to sand off. Scrap rates soared to 30 percent.

To investigate the causes of the problem, the conventional approach would be to test one factor at a time in a set of experiments. With the high number of factors contributing to the problem, however, K2 simply could not afford to perform experiments in this slow manner.

Design of Experiments (DOE) considers all the factors simultaneously. DOE also shows how the factors respond over a wide range of values, without requiring all possible values to be directly tested. In addition, DOE provides information about the interaction of factors. K2 purchased Design-Ease (Stat-Ease Corp., Minneapolis) in the hope that it would make analyzing these multi-factor processes manageable.

In applying the new DOE software to the molding problem, K2 first defined the contributing factors, along with the range in which to vary each factor. K2 entered 17 factors into the software's factorial design builder and chose a fractional two-level experiment. This would screen out the vital few factors from the trivial many. Statistical analysis of the resulting data identified four key factors: core placement, core extension material, top thickness, and base width.

The DOE revealed a surprising interaction between the top thickness and base width, which pointed to the need for different dimensions. After adjusting the dimensions, the quality rate soared.

DOE also helped K2 identify five factors that affected delamination. These factors involved the rate at which the presses open and close, as well as the rate at which pressure is applied to the ski during the molding process. By adjusting these rates, K2 dramatically reduced delamination, from 1.8 percent to 0.12 percent. In recognition of the optimization efforts, K2's molding team won the 1995 Rochester Institute of Technology&emdash;USA Today Quality Cup for manufacturers.

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