N
I've been asked to address a few recurring issues here at work. Please bear in mind this question relates to a 'family' of parts only - short run, job shop type parts. We run two systems, one for those requiring TS or ISO9001 and another for the short run/spot buy stuff.
Main Internal Management complaints are 1) that engineering misses the mark on our cycle time estimations and that 2) engineering provides manufacturing incomplete/inaccurate information (including aspects related to the mfg print and/or the traveler or router).
The feeling I and others have is that we are too lax during APQP. Reality is that for this short-run job shop type work APQP is pretty non-existent.
Having said that, I see the APQP manual mentions in Appendix A, A3, line 12, ensuring we have capacity to handle forecasted production volumes. Surely capacity is related to the part cycle time, which we make educated guesses at during quoting. However, we don't get the chance to do prototype or pilot runs and thus don't get the chance to actually see how long it takes to run so there is the risk of shipping late.
My questions then, in a round about way:
Do you consider cycle times a direct output of APQP? If so, at what point in the APQP process are they usually identified?
Or perhaps APQP is concerned only with capacity, and cycle times should be treated only as an input into scheduling....
Any suggestions on how we could address the issue of improperly identifying cycle times for parts yet to be run?
Any thoughts or advice will be greatly appreciated as I try to come up with an improvement plan! Thanks!
Main Internal Management complaints are 1) that engineering misses the mark on our cycle time estimations and that 2) engineering provides manufacturing incomplete/inaccurate information (including aspects related to the mfg print and/or the traveler or router).
The feeling I and others have is that we are too lax during APQP. Reality is that for this short-run job shop type work APQP is pretty non-existent.
Having said that, I see the APQP manual mentions in Appendix A, A3, line 12, ensuring we have capacity to handle forecasted production volumes. Surely capacity is related to the part cycle time, which we make educated guesses at during quoting. However, we don't get the chance to do prototype or pilot runs and thus don't get the chance to actually see how long it takes to run so there is the risk of shipping late.
My questions then, in a round about way:
Do you consider cycle times a direct output of APQP? If so, at what point in the APQP process are they usually identified?
Or perhaps APQP is concerned only with capacity, and cycle times should be treated only as an input into scheduling....
Any suggestions on how we could address the issue of improperly identifying cycle times for parts yet to be run?
Any thoughts or advice will be greatly appreciated as I try to come up with an improvement plan! Thanks!