Fighting fit

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Magazine Article, Source : The Manufacturer
Zone : Leadership and Lean
Published : July 2008

Agility and flexibility are fundamental to creating a sustainable domestic manufacturing base. Jayne Flannery looks at ways in which traditional manufacturers are re-engineering their processes

With the eastwards migration of volume production, domestic manufacturers are increasingly confronted with the challenge of meeting low volume, bespoke requirements to ever tighter lead times. Innovation and technological advantage are key drivers behind the solid core of sustainable UK manufacturing enterprises. But new products must be bought quickly to market if they are to achieve their full lifecycle potential. Agility has become a byword for success in this environment. Applied to manufacturing, it means the ability of the entire production process to respond to rapid and unexpected changes, but without compromising quality or increasing costs.

Allan French is managing director of Scottish timber window manufacturer Blairs. He has seen the company’s ability to respond to customer demand transformed by its participation in the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). This is Europe’s leading initiative to help businesses improve their competitiveness and productivity through leveraging the knowledge, technology and skills available within the UK.

The company joined the programme three years ago, spurred on by the belief that it needed more capacity. A single production line was tasked with making some 1,400 different variants of window, and the original intention was to invest in a single super machine that could produce everything. “The production line was full of bottlenecks downstream because of constant machine changeovers. There were endless delays waiting for the right machines, tools, skill sets and paperwork to come together,” said French.

Under the guidance of two KTP Associates who were seconded to the company from the University of Strathclyde, the company’s thinking began to radically change. The project began using Simul8 software – developed by the University some years ago and then hived off into a commercial enterprise – to map out production processes. It showed that far from needing more capacity, Blairs was using only around 50 per cent of what it already had.

“By taking these process maps and then modeling them alongside alternative production methodologies, again using computer simulation software, we could see the potential of an entirely new strategy; quick response manufacturing (QRM). This approach focuses solely on lead time and work flow. Agility for us meant being able to measure and reduce work in progress and manufacturing lead time,” he said.

“QRM relies on grouping equipment into cells to enable similar product groups to flow through them much more quickly and has the in-built flexibility to change the routings through the cells to deal with variants. The idea is that the cells are arranged in such a way that capacity is always available when material arrives to be processed,” explained senior research fellow, Trevor Turner, the academic who oversaw the project.

“A simple, visual card system links the different elements of the cell and functions as a shopfloor control mechanism. It runs in parallel with the MRP system and directs staff to areas where flow is possible. The aim is to take out the waiting time between operations. Operatives cannot start a task until the card system indicates that capacity is available.”

Turner believes that one of the biggest challenges in adopting an approach such as QRM is the mindset that dictates a facility should always aim to operate to 100 per cent capacity. “Because QRM focuses only on work flow and lead time, it relies on capacity being always available when needed so there is always some excess, but it is ideally suited to manufacturing operations with high variety and low batch sizes.” he said.

Adoption of QRM led Blairs to invest in a number of small, specialised but discrete machines which were as highly automated as possible. There are now four specialised production lines and sub-cells within those to deal with special features. The re-design of many products has also enabled a much more standardised approach to production while still enabling bespoke finishing to customer specification.

The results have been so spectacular that the team has won Best Partnership in the KTP 2008 Awards. The project anticipated an increase in Blairs’ volume from 27,000 units per annum to 35,000 units per annum. Initial analysis showed Blairs’ capacity as being only 22,000 units per annum, much less than was thought, and the project succeeded in almost doubling this to 40,000 units. Meanwhile, the factory has reduced delivery times from eight weeks to six weeks and the manufacturing cycle time from 20 working days to 14 days.

The original proposal considered a profit of £150,000 as being achievable. Yet last year, the company achieved a profit of £350,000 – the best result ever.

“The fundamental transfer of knowledge into the business was excellent,” stated French. “We were able to apply state-of-the-art tools and techniques to what was still, in essence, a traditional joinery operation and emerge as a state-of-the-art manufacturing operation,” he said. He particularly rated the pragmatic and structured way of analysing the company’s problems that the KTP associates bought to Blairs.

“Having a dedicated resource in the form of two associates who had no other tasks or distractions was a tremendous benefit. We were working with very high calibre graduates who could be fast-tracked and so we covered a lot of ground very quickly,” he added. In the case of Blairs the benefits have been permanent. One associate, John Ritchie, is now group head of design and the other, David Giles, is factory production manager.

Blairs now has an ongoing relationship with the University of Strathclyde. Allan French sits on the KTP Advisory Board for the west of Scotland, and Blairs is gearing up for a second round of KTP. “Next we want to focus on continuous improvement, particularly reliability engineering and how we can further reduce waste,” he said.

Irwin’s Bakery, Northern Ireland’s largest independent bakery, which has recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, faced a similar dilemma. Producing hundreds of distinct bread types in small, unpredictable batch sizes to the tight lead times demanded by retail multiples while ensuring that customers always get a fresh product had produced a natural agility. But production planning had not kept pace with either customer demand or the ever-expanding product portfolio.

“Irwin’s existing planning systems and processes meant agility came at a cost – in inflated raw materials inventory, production inefficiency and waste,” stated Dave Manning, senior partner with Oliver Wight.

The arrival of a new managing director, Bill Brown, heralded a complete overhaul of the company’s business processes and planning systems, undertaken in collaboration with consultancy Oliver Wight. Brown recognised the value that a new ERP system could deliver to the business, but realised the investment would be useless if not supported by changes to both processes and the people who manage them.

Past experience had illustrated that investment in stand-alone IT systems would not bring optimum results. “We knew we had to change people’s attitudes regarding the importance of accurately recording and sharing data. Our people were used to working in small discrete units and did not understand the impact of their actions in other areas further down the line. There was no proper internal communication or access to the full picture,” said Brown.

Whereas there were previously no measures to inform desirable behaviour, the re-engineering of Irwin’s planning and control systems mean that production is now guided and monitored by a series of key performance indicators (KPIs) across areas such as schedule adherence, data accuracy and velocity.

There was also a big emphasis on work flow. “Re-organisation enabled us to create flow counterpoints, which have been key to better control and monitoring of the production process. This was supported by parallel initiatives in basic housekeeping and preventative maintenance,” explained Manning.

The new ERP system will give a fully integrated planning and control system, providing better tracking and visibility of order status. “Customer services, order processing, demand management and planning and execution are all now linked within in a single system. Previously we had stand alone systems and a manual planning system,” said Brown.

The implementation is not yet fully live, but Brown is convinced it will generate significant cost savings through waste reduction in the longterm. “The immediate benefit is a much better ability to track orders and give improved customer service which, for a business like ours, is highly complex. We dispatch a million retail packs a week to multiple markets with differing schedules according to how far away they are sited. We are also highly susceptible to promotions and unpredictable weather and often have less than 24 hours to react to changes,” he said.

Brown believes that, in the case of Irwin’s, the use of external consultants represented a much bigger wake-up call to staff than if the company had gone it alone. “The gravitas of a good consultancy means that people not only listen, but that they are also much more likely to translate what they hear into action and new behaviours,” he concluded.

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