I one instance we took our quotation process for new products from an average of 24-26 days down to less than 72 hours or less. It required a different look for the office and our relationship with suppliers to needed to be synergistic. Most of the waste we identified was from various hand-offs and signatures that were required for whatever reason.
An average month for the company (contract manufacturer) was $5-7 million a month in new quotes. The longer our quotation process took, the longer it took to begin making money if did win the business. There were also instances we identified where the customer's bidding process was open for 45-60 days for extremely large quotes (high number of models/parts on a single RFQ). We also realized that we were scrambling and potentially putting other bids at risk when these quotes came in the door because they would get pushed aside for the BIG $$$'s.
We are working with hospitals to VSM (Value Stream Management) their processes. I really can't go into great detail (it is a different department from mine), however, the response from the customers seem to be positive.
I was just reading with much interest the reply stating a significant reduction in time to quote in a contract manufacturing environment.
I am faced with the need to perform some similar improvements and would be interested in whether Wayne would be able to elaborate on the approach. I would be interested in learning about how Wayne was able to align better with suppliers as well as cutting through the red tape. Please feel free to respond to me privately if this works better for you.
Other areas in your endeavour that I am interested in are:
How many people made up the core staff of the quote processing effort?
Was the number of persons reduced as part of your improvements?
Were the bulk of the communications through paper based systesm before? After improvemnts?
Any other elaborations would be much appreciated.
VSM (Value Stream Management) for service industry - Lean Manufacturing
Linear Mode
