Incoplan - Catalyst to Lean Manufacturing - Part III ( Last Part )

2 INCOPLAN: LEAN CATALYST

It is good to have dreams and it is even better to convert the dream into reality. If one answer to the question, “when can you deliver?” is usually something similar to, “That will probably take four to six week – we will confirm in week’s time”. Here one is missing an opportunity to significantly improve your competitiveness. Imagine, if one says, “we will deliver at 1100 hrs on January 10^th, guaranteed.”

With Incoplan, one can provide precise, ‘capable-to-promise’ delivery dates, based on the realistic situation of the production status.

We will explore the specific functionalities of our scheduling solution “Incoplan” with reference to the concepts of ‘lean manufacturing’ as defined earlier. It would be interesting to note that Incoplan effectively attacks both tangible and intangible parameters of the production process.

I - VALUE STREAM MAPPING

a) Process Chain View:

Incoplan has capability to build external process and manage them based on standard lead time with internal process. This allows user to consider the ‘value chain’ starting from the supplier or vendor without restricting only to the internal resources. This capability enables user to map the external changes and deviations to internal process flow and vice versa.

Additional benefit of this capability is to identify and manage accurately the synchronization between the external and internal resources to create better stability and higher throughput.

a) Internal Supply Chain View:

Many times the process flow has few critical operations which are not directly related to production activities. This is especially significant in ‘make-to-order’ scenario. In this case, not only the production activities, but process of ‘product design’ is important as well. In such cases, it is a great help to the organization, if t hey can globally plan design activity and synchronize production activities with it.

This enables user to visualize a complete planning board even if manufacturing activities are of prime concern. In case of any changes, one can see through the global plan to ensure that local decisions are in line with the global changes.

II - STREAMLINE FLOW

With the aim of reducing the un-productive time, if defined so in the business rule, Incoplan tries to minimize the setup time, which is nothing but the ‘system fat’ or ‘waste’.

In spite of this, with flexibility of process modeling it keeps the ‘lean concept’ intact by processing ‘piece-by-piece’ through different manufacturing stages.

A simple illustration of this capability can be understood by following example:

It is important to note here that Incoplan manages all process constraints and group similar parts on resources when all constraints defined are honored. In the above example, even when it is grouping similar parts on resources, it maintains ‘unit piece’ flow as it has been identified and defined in the process flow definition.

It is well observed that in the above example, Incoplan not only reduces the setup time but also increases the throughput by reducing the overall production cycle time. Asthe unproductive resource time is reduce, the natural result is better resource utilization and productivity.

Consider a situation where batch production is necessary. In this case, though it looks impossible to have ‘unit piece’ flow process, the flexibility of Incoplan data model and strong capability of algorithm makes it possible to have effectively ‘unit piece’ production flow. Following example illustrates the base logic built in our solution. Consider two operations performed one after the other on two different resources, with say batch quantityof eight [8].

II - PULL PRODUCTION

As the name suggest, the concept is to ‘pull’ the requirement from the predecessor operation. The obvious benefit of this process flow is reduced work-in-progress. Here an essential point to note is that any unpredictable cause on the production domain may create operational losses. For example, assume that there is a material shortage or machine breakdown at a given stage of the production system. Though the next operation would demand or try to pull the requirement from the current operation node, it is not possible as the material with specific value addition is not available.

In this case, intelligent solution as Incoplan would re-schedule the given scenario on demand, to create a new solution, where the entire production link is optimized. It will re-schedule not only the affected operational link but also manage remaining operational links to make the schedule feasible and ‘best-fit’ case for a given condition. The simulation with change provides quick result and relevant analytical data to evaluate KPI. In case of ‘make-to-order’ and ‘assembly’ environment, the last operation of assembly [of multiple components] can start only and only after all components are ready and available. Even if one has 95% of the components ready, the assembly operationhas to wait for remaining 5% of the components. Obviously, it builds higher work-in-progress during this time period. Additional requirement to reduce the work-in-progress is to plan and schedule components required for one assembly during the same time period. This ensures less waiting time for individual components on shop and eventually minimizes overall work-in-progress and increases throughput.

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II - KAIZEN

The world is dynamic and any static object will reduce its value and stability with time. Production process being the core and dynamic environment of any organization, it is important to always ‘look-ahead’ to create small but continuous improvement.

Incoplan is a solution, which extends strong and visible support onthese aspects. With magnificent simulation capability and possibility to generate specific analytical data, it gives precise views to identify the ‘root-cause’. With time, Incoplan establishes also as a strong tool to be used as ‘cause and effect’ solution for the organization.

Another invincible feature is ‘what-if’ analysis, which not only gives better solution adapting the changes in business rule and process parameters but also allows user to create a strong ‘learning’ while generating ‘off-line’ simulations. In real sense, Incoplan becomes the ‘family doctor’, using which one can exactly predict answers to all basic questions like what, where, when and how.

As the environment of industrial organization is separated by different functions, still it is closely connected for the production related activities. The connection starts from planning, materials to production, sales ….finally to management and performance. Incoplan has unique feature, where other functions can visualize the real time view of the production shop and also get a realistic prediction about the new sales order while considering current load and process constraints.

To summarize, Incoplan helps to build an excellent manufacturing system and provides authoritative help in virtually all directions related to planning and production system.

Incoplan:

• Builds complete ‘internal supply chain’.
• Provides guideline for managing external resource e.g. vendors.
• Support for multiple production activities.
• Visualization across the organization.
• Helps to synchronize purchase and procurement activities.
• Increases ‘on-time’ delivery performance.
• > Provides quick and precise order promise dates.
• Reduces work-in-progress significantly.
• Increases throughput performance.
• Improves resource utilization and productivity.
• Minimizes ‘un-productive’ elements e.g. setup time.
• Manages all operational and process constraints.
• Strong simulation capability.
• Quick and accurate ‘what-if’ analysis.
• Centralize information to improve global decision making