For many
years I have held in very high regard those manufacturers of “Case Goods” or
wood finished furniture who had the intestinal fortitude to tough it out as
United States Manufacturers when most case goods manufacturers packed up and
left the US because they needed cheap product to enable them to keep sales.
I have found
that a manufacturer must sell something cheap because they don’t have the
marketing and/or sales talent to enable the sale of a US made product against a
cheap foreign product. Also, a cheap sale would be necessary because they do
not have design talent onboard to attract a customer to buy better designed and
made US products.
The main
problem to compete in the US vs Foreign products has been the ability to come
to grips with the idea that the US customer wants their product with their
stamp of design and color, and they want it NOW! They are not willing to wait
for your company to make a cutting, assembly, finish, and ship for six months.
So, here is
an idea for you!
A modern
case goods plant in fact contains three plants. One plant cuts and stores the
parts for the entire product line. It is driven by best guestimates of future demand.
If the parts are not cut from fixed sized wood panels on CNC Machines, the
inventory must be cut on machines where set-up time and run time must be taken
into consideration. This would mean that each machine must be scheduled for
set-up and run time. Then the machine schedule would also be fed best guess styles
to be cut along with the fact that you don’t want to schedule parts to be
machined that would be an over supply and then scrapped later because lack of
orders.
The best
practice was to keep unique style parts together in a bin with a cut order card
inserted in the stack that, when the card level is reached, a recut would be
issued. By location of the cut order card in the bin, the total recut of all
unique parts for a particular style would be back in the bin stock almost at
the same time the last group of unique parts is pulled for assembly.
Said another
way, the cut order card would be placed in the inventory stack where the total
unique parts for a style should be depleted when the recut order for the unique
parts hits zero inventory. This number of total cut parts could be communicated
to sales so they could promise a delivery. If sales see a n unusual high order,
they should advise scheduling to move the card up in the bin parts stack.
This unique
part inventory would also be supported with a common part inventory and a special
hardware inventory for a style.
When an order
comes in, it goes almost immediately to the second plant for production which
is the assembly plant. The order , which includes the bill of material and
parts list, is given to a order picker who gathers the parts for a particular
assembly order, checks them for quality and total numbers, then issues the
picked parts, hardware, and standard parts to a holding zone beside an assembly
person.
If an assembly
person must take any steps to get a pert or hardware, your system is in failure
and needs to be reviewed or adjusted.
Of course,
part of the engineering development is to video every assembly and make it
available to the assembly person on a local individual tablet. This allows even
a new assembly person to pick up the procedures rapidly.
Once
assembled, the finished product goes to sanding, then into the third plant
which is the finishing plant.
Finishing
can have certain day/time for a color or obtain a color and type of finish for
a specific customer/end user.
The end
product is checked against the specifications for the finished product, then
released to package and shipping.
This method
of scheduling can allow a specific product to be fully manufactured and shipped
in this time frame:
1. Pull Parts for product assembly. 1
hour
2. Assemble product 2 hour
3. Sand 1 hour
4. Finish 2 hours + drying time ?
5. Pack 2 hours
Total ship time from receipt of order = 8 – 10 hours from
receipt of order
.
This would
mean we could put an order on a truck to a customer before a foreign manufacturer
received the order. What do you think?
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