Production levelling (or smoothing) is an important part of the Toyota production system. Here we show why production levelling is so important and how it is achieved in the process industry.
Performance Measurement
10 high-powered building blocks that change the way you look at your complex supply chain
Ever wish that there were simple, fundamental building blocks that could be used to represent your supply chain, no matter its complexity?
Hidden in the industrial engineering literature are 10 building blocks that can be used to clearly establish the performance of an entire supply chain.
How to create a factory performance metric that boosts productivity and changes behaviours
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is often used as the main metric for factory performance in the process industry (food & beverage, liquids, sheet goods, solid & fluid packaging operations).
However, while OEE is a good measure for independent workstations and processes, production lines in the process industry are usually made up of several workstations and processes which are all connected together, rendering the OEE metric less than ideal.
The 9 most important operational leverage points in a complex supply chain
What does your customer value? The harsh reality is that customers often don’t care if your plant is state-of-the-art. They generally don’t care if your warehousing and transportation network is cutting edge.
Usually, what they care about is how quickly products move to and through their supermarket or factory, whether the product is to specification
7 fundamental differences between food & beverage factories and car factories
Lean manufacturing was developed using the Toyota Production System. Hence it is instructive for those working in the food & beverage industry to examine how food & beverage manufacturing is different when compared to car manufacturing. We have come up with 7 fundamental differences and would love to hear from you if you can think … Read more
How to fix a supply disaster at a high technology factory
You know the signs, the factory keeps missing production schedules and you keep depleting finished goods inventory. Its now so bad that you are missing vital customer orders and some customers are threatening to delist. This is a common story and here we use a scenario based on actual events to illustrate how an understanding … Read more
What is the optimum order quantity for my unique supply network?
This is a tough question and if someone can provide a commonsense answer then they must know what they are talking about. Well here we go! To be relevant the calculation for an optimum order quantity should take account of 100 years of industrial engineering and operations research. So ….. below we review the 4 … Read more
What is Stock Aggregation and how can it benefit my supply system?
Production variability and demand variability causes congestion in supply chains. One way to reduce this congestion is to reduce the variability by addressing its causes. Another and more subtle way to deal with congestion is by combining multiple sources of variability. This is known as variability pooling, and has a number of supply chain applications. … Read more
What is Queue Sharing and how can it benefit my factory or warehouse?
Production variability and demand variability causes congestion in supply chains. One way to reduce this congestion is to reduce the variability by addressing its causes. Another and more subtle, way to deal with congestion effects is by combining multiple sources of variability. This is known as variability pooling, and has a number of manufacturing and … Read more
What is a flow line and how can it be manipulated to maximise performance?
Capacity decisions made at the time of asset procurement have a huge strategic effect on the long term competitiveness of a manufacturing operation. This is particularly true in the process industry where most of the factories use Flow Lines.
In this article we explain how flow lines are designed as well as the supply chain system benefits of un-balancing flow lines, i.e. adding extra capacity upstream and downstream of a flow line’s bottleneck.