BPR IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Enablers of BPR in manufacturing:

1. Agile2. Lean3. JIT4. Collaborative Technology5. Intelligent Manufacturing

BPR IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRYAgile manufacturing can be defined as the “capability of surviving and prospering in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable change by reacting quickly and effectively to changing markets, driven by ‘customer-defined’ products and services” (Cho et al.,1996).

Agile manufacturing is a new expression that is used to represent the ability of a producer of goods and services to survive and thrive in the face of continuous change. These changes can occur in markets, technologies, business relationships and all other facets of the business enterprise (Devor et al., 1997).

Agile manufacturing aims to meet the changing market requirements by suitable alliances based on core-competencies, by organizing to manage change and uncertainty, and by leveraging people and information.

BPR IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY-AGILE

In short, agile manufacturing does not represent a series of techniques much as it represents a fundamental change in management philosophy (Maskell, 1994).

It is not about small-scale improvements, but an entirely different way of doing business (Kidd, 1996) with a primary emphasis on flexibility and quick response to the changing markets and customer needs.

BPR IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY

Agility

Strategy

Organisation

TechnologyPeople

BPR

Training and

Education

Incentive Schemes

QFDITE-

Commerce

• Look at the use of BPR to identify and eliminate hand-offs/non-value-adding activities to save money.

• Apply a cellular manufacturing approach to shop floor for established products to reduce WIP, throughput times, and hence, unit costs.

• Keep the process layout for the new build products as the design flexibility characteristic of a process layout is high.

* QFD is a simple but highly effective technique which, when implemented, can enrich the customer and save time and money in getting the product right the first time.

* Gradually head towards a just-in-time (JIT) pull-system.

Gec-Marconi Aerospace Ltd, A Part of GE Company

* Consider an alternative to performance-related pay that will keep the employees motivated and encourage team-work. Remember, people are the most important assets!• Create cross-functional teams to eliminate dissimilarities between marketing and production.• Consider the implications of adding further levels of organisational hierarchy.• Look at the standardisation of parts, modular design, and the problem of over-designing the products (in terms of expensive materials being used, etc.).• Make everyone aware of what the company is doing via a network accessible to all. This could even include presentations about agile manufacturing so that everyone becomes, at the very least, familiar with the concept.• At GECMAe, a software called QMAP (Quality Management Activity Processing) is used to produce tree diagrams of the activities and processes carried out within departments. The diagrams are then discussed, finalised and put up on the walls within departments where people are encouraged and empowered to write on them with reference to possible improvements, or identification of loopholes within the processes.• Agility has major implications on: (i) Organisation, (ii) Business Processes, (iii) Production Processes and Equipment, (iv) People-Skill Interchangeability, (v) Recruitment and Training

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF AGILITY

In Agile methods, instead of building the whole product, you build the smallest possible useful part and give it to users, who tell you what is right and what is wrong. Agile development is an evolutionary conversation in which incremental steps of two to four weeks lead to feedback that allows requirements to be tested and adjusted.

Quality also increases in Agile projects because using a working system exposes defects right away instead of leaving them to a final testing phase.

Agile's popularity has led to a problem: How do you apply it at scale? How can a large project run using Agile methods? One team working on one project in an Agile way is not hard to envision. But what about running 10 or 20 teams, each working on part of a product? How does the list for each iteration get sorted out and synchronized? How does the result of each iteration become integrated into the larger whole?

Twelve principles underlie the Agile Manifesto in Software industry, include the following:

•Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development • Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)• Working software is the principal measure of progress • Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace • Close, daily co-operation between business people and developers • Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication• Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design • Simplicity • Self-organizing teams • Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

2. LEAN MANUFACTURING

Lean manufacturing was accepted as an innovative paradigm-that eliminates waste in any form, anywhere and at any time, relentlessly strives to maintain harmony in the flow of materials and information, and continually attempts to attain perfection.

2. LEAN MANUFACTURING

There is sort of conflict for taking the credit of introducing lean manufacturing. Some say it was Henry Ford who introduced it and some other believe that it was Toyota.

Lean management emphasises small batch sizes and, ultimately, single-piece flow (i.e. transfer batch size =1). The term pull is used to imply that nothing is made until it is needed by the downstream customer, and the application of a make-to-order (MTO) approach whenever possible.

REMOVING WASTE

Waste (muda in Japanese) has seven types: waste from overproduction, waste of waiting time, transportation waste, inventory waste, processing waste, waste of motion, and waste from product defects. Efforts focused on the reduction of waste are pursued through continuous improvement or kaizen events, as well as radical improvement activities.

LEAN

Look at it from a financial point of view

Traditional View: Cost + Profit = Sales Price

We add up all the costs to bring the product to market and then we add a profit % which dictates the selling price of a product. In our global market place this method whilst sounding logical is frequently undermined by the market dictating the price based on competition. Competition and customer demand will often set selling prices. By being able to control your costs through the elimination or minimising non value-added activities, you can become more competitive in the market place.

Lean View: Profit = Sales Price – Cost

LEAN AND BPR MODELWhen implementing lean & BPR model, a company should consider a four-phase

comprehensive improvement plan. The four phases of the model include :

Identifying the Problems: In the first phase of the model, business process that needs to be improved is identified. Then, objective of the project and indicators are defined. Next, a cross-functional team is formed. The literature suggests that key staff members from the primary organisational units involved in the process should be included in the team. Training includes soft skills and employee trainings to use the old and new tools of quality. The training of employees and staff should start from concepts such as 5S, lean production, value stream mapping.

analysing, implementing and evaluating.

PROCESS ACTIVITY MAP (PART OF ANALYSING THE PROBLEM)

IMPLEMENT PHASE

Focus on JIT Production Focus on Value Added Items (Team’s responsibility is to

reduce their production to include only those areas that are essential to the product)

Perform Work Study to eliminate non-value-added activities in the shop floor and reduce cycle time

Develop BOM file to determine exactly what items, and in what quantities, are required to complete an order for a given item

Have a close contact with vendors Allow vendors to provide inputs on how to improve their

system. (If any problems are discovered, managers can meet to discuss the same and

contact vendors for fixes)

EVALUATING THE SUCCESS

The final phase of the model involves evaluating the success of the improvement efforts against the performance objectives established in the first phase.

After this phase, it is important to loop back to the first phase to keep the improvement process continuous.

The success of model implementation should be reported back to everyone within the company. This will not only motivate the workforce, but it will also become a catalyst in creating a culture of continuous improvement.

(a culture where improvement activities will become a normal everyday activity).

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEAN PROCESSES IN AMANUFACTURING COMPANY ARE:

· Single-piece production · Repetitive order characteristics · Just-In-Time , Kanban scheduling · Short cycle times · Quick changeover · Continuous flow work cells · Productive machines, equipment, tools and people · Reduced space · Multi-skilled employees · Empowered employees · Defect free product on first production pass

5SsSORT: The first stage of 5S is to organize the work area, leaving only the tools and materials necessary to perform daily activities. When “sorting” is well implemented, communication between workers is improved and product quality and productivity are increased.SET IN ORDER :The second stage of 5S involves the orderly arrangement of needed items so they are easy to use and accessible for “anyone” to find. Orderliness eliminates waste in production and clerical activities.

SHINE The third stage of 5S is keeping everything clean and swept. This maintains a safer work area and problem areas are quickly identified. An important part of “shining” is “Mess Prevention.” In other words, don’t allow litter, scrap, shavings, cuttings, etc., to land on the floor in the first place.

STANDARDIZE The fourth stage of 5S involves creating a consistent approach for carrying out tasks and procedures. Orderliness is the core of “standardization” and is maintained by Visual Controls. Signboard strategy Signboard uses Painting strategy Colour-coding strategy Shadow boarding

SUSTAIN This last stage of 5S is the discipline and commitment of all other stages. Without “sustaining”, your workplace can easily revert back to being dirty and chaotic. That is why it is so crucial for your team to be empowered to improve and maintain their workplace. When employees take pride in their work and workplace it can lead to greater job satisfaction and higher productivity.

3. JIT

Just-in-Time (JIT) is a way of producing products on order, notbefore anybody has ordered the product. It also means that the product should be delivered “in time”. Just-in-Time originally encapsulated the logistics aspects of the Toyota Production System.

A brief summary of JIT core principles is given below: —these encapsulate key focus areas for BPR:

The use of multiple small machines (rather than "efficient" expensive machines that have to be kept busy).

 Group technology (commonly called "Cellular" manufacturing) It is based on the principle that product focused manufacturing is much simpler, with reduced

material flows, as compared to factories where similar processes are grouped together, such as heat treatment.

  Production smoothing (leveled schedules) is based on the principle — small is beautiful as far as batch sizes are concerned, and that what is required is made when required without inflating batch sizes.

  Labor balancing highlights line imbalance from the cycle time of one operation to the next, and indicates

the need to balance the manning for each operation (and the opportunity to improve the slowest to achieve balance).

  Set-Up reduction — the key factor in being able to reduce batch sizes. This should be applied to the

bottleneck first and perhaps stop there.

JIT

Standard working (defined by the operator not the industrial engineer) — is a prescribed sequence of production steps performed by one operator, and

balanced to the required rate of demand. It becomes the basis of understanding the job and therefore identifying what can be improved.

 Visual controls — Characteristic of JIT factories are simple visible controls, held locally where they

are used to monitor key performance indicators, and used as a spur to improvement. This is a deliberate attempt to give eyeball control rather than the over-sophistication provided by remote computer systems.

  Minimizing Inventory, Minimizing Work in Process and Synchronizing

Production A just-in-time (JIT) or pull system implementation without any technology to add

discipline to the process will fail badly. This is being used by most Japanese Auto Manufacturers. Auto OEMs are moving towards JIT in varying degrees, through BPR of their production and engineering divisions

Use of Kanbans and 5S to control production

JIT at SMEs

A new purchasing philosophy supporting frequent purchases of small lot sizes

Workers must be cross-trained, highly skilled and very disciplined.Identifying the value added and non-value added activities on the shop-floor

Top management’s Commitment to ensure the success of JIT

Production kanban shows that the preceding machine SB-8 must produce a Crankshaft for the type of machine specified. The part produced must be stored at shelf number F26-18.

Production KANBAN

Kanban is not an inventory control system. Rather, it is a scheduling system that tells you what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce.

Case Study : parallel, lean and agile supply chains: the USA carpetmaker

There is a limit to the advances in performance enabled by a business becoming `lean’ through eliminating obvious muda. A good example, where substantial innovative process re-engineering is additionally needed, is the carpet industry. Here, the traditional supply chain requires some 16 weeks from raw material supply to the carpet being fitted in the end-customers residence. This total cycle time covers six major processes that add value. Elimination of muda reduces the cycle time to about four weeks. Impressive though this 75% reduction may be, it hardly helps carpet manufacturers respond in an agile mode to satisfy the current customer-imposed time window - this is one week from ordering a specific size, colour, pattern, and qualify of carpet, to fitting in the house. The one week cycle time means that the production process must be totally re-engineered so that manufacture is completed within three days, which is a far cry from the best `lean’ performance of four weeks. The outcome of this marketplace pressure was a technology breakthrough with the invention of a revolutionary new process, named Solution Dyed Nylon. This enabled the fibre to be dyed prior to being woven into the carpet. Together with other essential re-engineering to reduce changeover times by 95% and downtime by 50% , plus integration of support processes, and streamlined material flow, the target cycle time window was achieved, coupled with the additional benefit of a slightly reduced cost to the end customer. However, a Pareto Curve based product analysis showed that the Agile Response Mode would only be justifiable for the top 10% of the product range, which contributed 52% of the volume leaving the mill. The remaining products have now been rationalized and are provided via an alternative Lean Supply Chain that does not offer the same one-week guaranteed delivery. This illustrates the importance of aligning the Agile Supply Chain with the business priorities driving the change.

COLLABORATIVE MANUFACTURING

Also known as e-manufacturing The shift from made-to-stock to made-to-

order has resulted in new manufacturing environments that require IT frameworks able to support this new dynamism.

Collaborative manufacturing environments demonstrate considerable potential in responding to this need. As such, the e-manufacturing project aims to develop an appropriate framework for a common platform to enable distributed planning and control in manufacturing.

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MANUFACTURING BUSINESS

Plant

Raw Material Supplier

Retailer

Consumer

B2B

Marketplace

Plant

Distributor

Retailer

B2B & B2C

Marketplace

B2B

Marketplace

Supplier

The pulse of information going up and down the supply chain is

increasing in frequency with a greater level of detail required at each link

Adapted, source: Rockwell Automation

Goods/Materials FlowInformation FlowCollaboration FlowKnowledge FlowFinancial Flow

E-MANUFACTURING:

A cyber workspace environment is developed (task a) that provides a common platform for the other five tasks, which are supply chain planning and scheduling (task b), distributed process planning (task c), planning-scheduling integration (task d), remote monitoring and control (task e), and integrated security and privacy for collaboration (task f), respectively.

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ENABLING TOOLS (I)

Data and information transformation tools Prediction tools Optimization tools Synchronization tools

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ENABLING TOOLS (III)

Data and information transformation tools Prediction tools Optimization tools Synchronization tools

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ENABLING TOOLS (IV)

Data and information transformation tools Prediction tools Optimization tools Synchronization tools

1. Data gathering and transformation:

This has already been done at various levels. However, massive raw data are not useful unless it is reduced and transformed into useful information format (i.e., XML) for responsive actions. Hence, data reconfiguration and mining tools for data reduction, representation for plant floor data need to be developed

2. Prediction and optimization:

Advanced prediction methods and tools need to be developed in order to measure degradation, performance loss, or implications of failure, etc. For prediction of degradation on components/machinery, computational and statistical tools should be developed to measure and predict the degradation using intelligent computational tools.

3. Synchronization:

Tools and agent technologies are needed to enable autonomous business automation among factory floor, suppliers, and business systems. Embedded intelligent machine infotronics agent that links between the devices/machinery and business systems and enables products, machinery, and systems to:

(1) learn about their status and environment, (2) predict degradation of performance, (3) reconfigure itself to sustain functional performance,

and (4) informate business decisions directly from the device itself .

Advantages of e-manufacturing:

By knowing the degradation of machines in the production floor, the operation supervisor can estimate their impacts to the materials flow and volume and synchronize it with the ERP systems.

The revised inventory needs and materials delivery can also be synchronized with other business tools such as MRP system.

When cutting tools wear out on a machining center, the information can be directly channeled to the tool providers and update the tool needs for tool performance management.

In this case, the cutting tool company is no longer selling cutting tools, but instead, selling cutting time.

In addition, when the machine degrades, the system can initiate a service call through the service center for prognostics.