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by
Laurie Joan Aron
| Abstract: |
Flow
manufacturing techniques have gained acceptance in the last few years,
but until recently, manufacturers have been reluctant to adopt the
supporting software. |
John
Strotbeck, president of custom team-apparel maker Boathouse Sports Ltd.
(Philadelphia, PA), started investigating demand flow manufacturing in
1995. By late 1997, he had instituted flow techniques to keep
work-in-process (WIP) moving smoothly and continuously, eliminating
bottlenecks and the under-utilization of capacity. Just by shifting to
continuous flow rather than accumulating work-in-process after each
production step, Boathouse realized significant gains: delivery time
dropped from about 12 weeks to 15 days, and work-in-process time
dropped from 30 days down to three and a half days.
By 1999, however, Boathouse's manual flow system was overwhelmed.
"Our sales volume had increased 300%. There was no way on earth to
manage it manually any more," says Strotbeck. To solve the problem, he
licensed flow manufacturing software from Factory Logic Software Inc.
(Austin, TX), which helps him handle workflow based on daily orders of
the company's highly configurable apparel.
Strotbeck's journey is becoming increasingly, although not
overwhelmingly, commonplace. Flow manufacturing techniques have gained
acceptance in the last few years, but until recent months,
manufacturers had been far more reluctant to adopt the software to
support them. "The initial theory of flow was to make shop-floor
operations visible, with simple messages [kanban cards], which everyone
could see," says Richard Lebovitz, chief executive officer of Factory
Logic. "It was about getting away from computer systems."
In truth, though, flow is about getting away from reliance on
manufacturing resource planning (MRP II) and advanced planning and
scheduling (APS) systems, not about doing without software on the
factory floor altogether. As mass customization and the pressure for
speedy delivery have increased, and since the focus has shifted away
from enterprise resource planning (ERP) investments and Y2K fixes, flow
software is getting a second and somewhat more enthusiastic look. Some
of its new users are implementing the software to support the flow
technique in its purest, non-MRP II form. Others are newly enthusiastic
about adopting a hybrid form of flow that extends the existing
enterprise resource planning system, or is compatible with it.
Companies adopting flow as an extension of their existing
ERP-technically a contradiction in terms since APS tends to be the
heart of ERP and a pure flow system would report numbers to ERP, but
not be driven by ERP-are finding it advantageous to evolve to a
software-supported flow system step by step.
Dixie Byers, director of materials systems for HVAC maker UPG York
International (Norman, OK), says her company is taking the
one-step-at-a-time approach to implementing flow software. As early as
1996, UPG York International was experimenting with kanbaning and
redesigning lines for smoother workflow. Eighteen months ago, the
company made a serious commitment to demand flow, investing in American
Software's (Atlanta, GA) demand smoothing and kanban applications,
which interface with York's Mapics ERP. "At first, we did flow with
plain old manpower," says Byers. "There would be hundreds of changes a
week to try to remix production to meet customer demand. We had close
to a year of twelve-hour days." The software implementation has eased
the pressure and, Byers notes, every step has brought benefits.
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