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

Incoplan - Catalyst to Lean Manufacturing - Part II

2 INCOPLAN

Incoplan is a finite scheduling solution, focuses on key areas across the organization. Though, the main objective remains the ‘effective and efficient’ management of manufacturing activities, it supports virtually all functions playing an important role in ‘internal supply chain’.


Lean manufacturing concept defines the system fat as ‘waste’, whereas Incoplan identifies this as ‘unproductive’ part of the system. Incoplan has been, naturally focusing on reduction/minimization/elimination of this ‘unproductive’ part, which is nothing but elimination of ‘waste’.

The core concept of Incoplan is:

Incoplan is a unique scheduling solution which encompasses agility, technology and flexibility to deliver best-fit solution with Value, Speed and Stability.

Incoplan attacks on all aspects of the ‘internal supply chain’ to maximize the global result. This also ensures good local results as well. It also provides a lot of flexibility to accommodate and model varying nature of the business process requirements arising out of numerous factors, even some are of external nature. This allows any organization to create a strong control over the chain and achieve best possible results.

It is interesting to note that Incoplan has been a result of many years of extensive research. The core design and business functionality of Incoplan creates a strong coherence with dynamic and strategic requirements of organization.

Incoplan provides strength and vision to build optimum production system, while managing leading techno-concepts right from creating value stream, Lean Manufacturing to Advanced Planning and Scheduling.

Typical building blocks of Incoplan solution are:


Let us try to understand the main areas related to manufacturing activities, which are potential candidate for generating waste or non-productive task/output. This also means, these areas are the ‘attack’ areas for Incoplan.

The typical manufacturing activities of industrial organization can be illustrated by the following example:


Considering the main focus area of scheduling solution, there are different functional areas where the standard concept of lean manufacturing would be applicable. With development of lean concept, it has established more or less standard check points to look for waste minimization. These check points many time addresses to a set of parameters, which needs to be evaluated.

A close observation through the process flow and business constraints reveals the ‘critical decision areas’, wherein the gain probability is higher. Incoplan adheres to and strategically manages these ‘critical decision areas’ to impart the systematic and continuous benefits to the organizations.

A. LEAN SCHEDULING

Incoplan manages entire manufacturing domain for planning and scheduling aspects. In addition, it also provides a strong decision support and specific analytical data to relevant connected functional divisions.
In fact, Incoplan in real sense, manages complete ‘internal supply chain’. This allows user to build a global, closely held business process to establish role, responsibility and accountability towards common objectives / business goals.

In this section, we will have an overview to find out more about Incoplan as a lean scheduling solution and in the next section, we will deal with specific examples to highlight natural strength of the solution.

How Incoplan derives and builds ‘Lean Scheduling’:

I - VALUE STREAM MAPPING

Value stream mapping focuses on process to build the product, following it from the beginning to the end of the production. Incoplan has modeling capability to divide the complete process chain into small and measurable tasks to create a systematic work flow. A very simple example is:

One product requires say two [2] days as total production cycle time, whereas the product is actually delivered in say seven [7] days after the order commitment. A careful observation would state that additional five [5] days are the potential candidate to be treated as ‘system fat’ or ‘waste’.

The realistic reason, why it is very difficult to have same values for these two parameters is current production load and process constraints including unpredictable events.

Incoplan always try to minimize this time gap. It always has ‘look forward’ approach to ensure that any local optimum change is not affecting the global symptoms. Therefore, Incoplan recognizes local level and global level process parameters to manage the complete manufacturing link in a streamline manner.

II - STREAMLINE FLOW

The entire flow line is a visible evidence to measure the ‘health indicator’ of the system. It is important to have small and measurable task across the flow and identification of pain areas. The ideal example would be a flow of water stream. Two classic attributes of the flow of water stream are: continuity and streamline.

In manufacturing environment, ideal flow is ‘one piece’ flow. It is feasible to build ‘piece-by-piece’ process flow in Incoplan. There are a few key aspects, which may cause a global effect on overall performance, if strictly ‘one piece’ flow is followed. For example, in a batch production or process environment, wherein setup times are much higher compare to execution or run time, it would be appropriate to produce in batch. Still one can achieve the core objective of ‘one piece’ flow mechanism.

This is what Incoplan is capable off. It has enormous strength to model multiple parameters and process flow constraints to derive the process model suitable to work environment, while adhering to the principals of manufacturing practices.

In general, routings with necessary details, production constraints and setup times are most important criterions, which defines and derives the best possible way for achieving a ‘streamline flow’ as equivalent to ‘water stream’.

III - PULL PRODUCTION

The standard pull production system aims at minimizing ‘work-in-progress’ [WIP] through all levels of process. In an ideal pull system, in-process inventory at each stage is one unit. Pull system environment can be described as: when demand for the preceding stage’s output is generated by the succeeding stage, the preceding stage’s unit of inventory is transferred to the succeeding stage.

The ideal pull system with one unit of inventory at each stage may not be achievable in a real manufacturing system, where a variation in processing time, imbalance of workloads between stages, demand fluctuation and machine breakdown are inevitable.

The process modeling of Incoplan enables to group similar type of production tasks and maintain the pull production characteristics as ‘one-unit’ flow. This allows not only adhering to the base concepts, which eliminates un-necessary work-in-progress but also having similar units moving together, which gives advantage to absorb deviations in the process and resource parameters.

IV - KAIZEN

One this is always constant in any environment and that is change. It is important to understand the change and act accordingly to improve the global performance. The word kaizen is normally linked with ‘event’. An event signifies a short time period. It is important to note that when any event in a system changes, the path to improvement changes quite frequently.

Incoplan solution has ‘smart intelligence’ to read, understand and map any process or short term change of event and deliver the new solution in short time. In fact, it has the ability to map and solve the problem without affecting the core data. This essentially forms the learning with ‘cause and effect’ analysis of the system.

In addition, Incoplan allows a quick support for ‘what-if’ analysis, which is nothing but a good analytical tool to have continuous learning and improvement.
To make a synopsis, Incoplan –

• Creates a business organization model
• Accepts planned requirements
• Establishes production profile
• Work with business objectives and process constraints
• Generate ‘best-fit’ production schedule
• Manage ‘change’ across entire chain and provide quick analysis

Incoplan - Catalyst to Lean Manufacturing - Part I

1. OVERVIEW

The current manufacturing world is driven by multidimensional forces, which leads to a complex and dynamic decision environment. This demands high competencies, vigilance and knowledge. The complete manufacturing system is closely dependant and integrated as well. A good visualization of such a system could be very well seen as function of a human body.

Without any dilemma, we can mention the core manufacturing activities of any organization is equivalent function of ‘heart’ of a human body. The most of the ‘value addition’ inside the system is governed by the manufacturing function in industrial organization as it is by ‘heart’ in a human body. It is also interesting to observe that the material flow through the organization is govern and controlled mainly by manufacturing activities. Naturally, when a function is a central activity with lot of surrounding factors, it is obvious to have deviations, critical decision points and inter-dependencies. All these factors lead to create ‘system losses’. These losses could be in any form, shape and size. It could be tangible or even intangible.

These are what could be termed as ‘System Fat’ or simply ‘Waste’.

The ‘Lean Manufacturing’ intends to eliminate these ‘System Fat’ or ‘Waste’, throughout the system. It is important to note, waste accumulates maximum where the dynamics and uncertainty is higher. Therefore, in any industrial environment the focus of attention to evolve this concept is rolled around three objects:

• Means [Stock, Material …]
• Flow [Workflow, System, Process …]
• Manufacturing [Resources, Constraints, …]

In general, the definition of ‘Lean Manufacturing’ is: “Lean manufacturing is the system which aims in elimination of the waste with a systematic and continuous approach”

2. SCHEDULING FOCUS

The scheduling application has the ability to create a ‘short term plan’ based on the manufacturing model identified. Technically, scheduling could be defined as:
“A plan for performing work or achieving an objective, specifying the order and allotted time / resources for each part”

Logically, any problem domain with following four base elements can be identified as problem of scheduling:

• Task
• Time
• Resource
• Constraints

It can be well understood that for any given set of problem, with four basic elements as mentioned above, environment and nature of solution could be different. In fact, for one particular environment, the solution demand may change as the factors affecting the problem domain are dynamic and probabilistic.

There are three most important aspects of scheduling application to achieve the ‘best-fit’ case:

• First is to create a good manufacturing model,
• Second is to create inbuilt agility and
• Third is to have a strong engine to drive the system in best possible direction.