QMS Improvement - Where To Start?

[Bev D]

I would ask two questions at this point:

Are any of the “ASAP” Customers the one that is taking their business elsewhere?
Are these “ASAP” orders leapfrogging and slowing down the orders for this Customer who is taking their business elsewhere?

 

[Randy]

"We need it ASAP!!!!"............... "OK, we can get it there by 9/23/2032!"

Prove me wrong.

 

[Kurt Smith]

The ASAP criticisms are good points. But for a lot of these customers, the issue isn't necessarily the speed of getting parts. Sure they want them now, but if it takes us 2 weeks they still want them. The real problem is our inability to estimate cycle times. If a major rush order arrives we don't have a way to know if it will put us behind a day or a week.

When something drops in the owners give them an estimate, but it is based purely on their knowledge of the shop. If several drop in orders arrive the same week or if there are unforeseen bottlenecks, everything falls behind. For normal orders that have a month of lead time, we can adjust or approve OT where it is needed if too many orders come in.

If we had a consistent range of parts we made it would be a lot easier to estimate or build into the schedule a way to track our capacity. But we have thousands of parts on file. Some are more consistent than others, but a full half of our work is either new parts being made for the first time, or small quantities of parts we only do 2 or 3 times a year.

My current idea is to do a simple 1, 2, 3, complexity level system. Assign each part number a level and try to track over time roughly how many of each level we can handle at a time. But that is a long way off. For now, being able to review any data at all is a huge win. Reviewing late orders with ownership and showing the trends will hopefully help a lot with their estimations.

 

[Golfman25]

The ASAP criticisms are good points. But for a lot of these customers, the issue isn't necessarily the speed of getting parts. Sure they want them now, but if it takes us 2 weeks they still want them. The real problem is our inability to estimate cycle times. If a major rush order arrives we don't have a way to know if it will put us behind a day or a week.

When something drops in the owners give them an estimate, but it is based purely on their knowledge of the shop. If several drop in orders arrive the same week or if there are unforeseen bottlenecks, everything falls behind. For normal orders that have a month of lead time, we can adjust or approve OT where it is needed if too many orders come in.

If we had a consistent range of parts we made it would be a lot easier to estimate or build into the schedule a way to track our capacity. But we have thousands of parts on file. Some are more consistent than others, but a full half of our work is either new parts being made for the first time, or small quantities of parts we only do 2 or 3 times a year.

My current idea is to do a simple 1, 2, 3, complexity level system. Assign each part number a level and try to track over time roughly how many of each level we can handle at a time. But that is a long way off. For now, being able to review any data at all is a huge win. Reviewing late orders with ownership and showing the trends will hopefully help a lot with their estimations.

So start with the fact that a "simple" job shop is the most complex manufacturing environment to manage. Like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're going to get. Your lead times will flex based on what you're running at the time. A 1, 2, 3 system will work. Once you get to a certain number of 3's you'll need to start pushing out lead times. But it's a lot more art than science. It might be as simple as starting each day/week with a current lead time estimate. Have the powers that be take a look at the load and say "ok, we are X weeks out." Then stick to to it with the new order coming in.

 

[Golfman25]

I get that. But we often have customers request parts who would set a due date of tomorrow if they had the choice. Is there a better option than ASAP?

Heck, we get POs with due dates the week prior.

It's really about communicating with the customer. Problem is today, everything is "on the computer" and nothing is reality. The computer says it, so it must be true. Computer might say they need by Friday, but production may be able to give an extra week or two.

 

[Randy]

Computer might say they need by Friday, but production may be able to give an extra week or two.

Just encountered this very thing last week during an annual surveillance. Production orders were showing June, July, August delivery needs and production not actually finished or even starting until now...........Awaiting parts and materials from suppliers who were waiting on their suppliers, etc, etc.

*hit happens! A survival key is to communicate with the customer, "will they accept partial delivery" or something like that, be honest, but don't leave them hanging without any word, or you might as well take your Hemlock now.

 

[ChrisM]

Heck, we get POs with due dates the week prior.

You should be refusing to accept those orders until they are amended or canceled and replaced by Orders with agreed due dates.
One issue we have where I currently work is that we do that, but the customer often measures us by the date they originally quoted, not the revised agreed date. We get penalised for late delivery and then have to prove/argue the case that we were on time as we never accepted their original "want" date - a huge waste of resources but then we have no control over our customer's IT systems and the way that they enter their data

 

[mattador78]

Our's is 5 days after the day of reciept. We never include the day it arrives or is placed as how many hours do you have left in that day? Where does it fit in the current production plan. So our customers are all made aware its 5 days from 6am the day after it arrives on site.

 

[Golfman25]

You should be refusing to accept those orders until they are amended or canceled and replaced by Orders with agreed due dates.
One issue we have where I currently work is that we do that, but the customer often measures us by the date they originally quoted, not the revised agreed date. We get penalised for late delivery and then have to prove/argue the case that we were on time as we never accepted their original "want" date - a huge waste of resources but then we have no control over our customer's IT systems and the way that they enter their data

Yeah, I have already explained to the customer that their data in general is BS and I don't care much about it. We are just hitting "targets" for the higher ups who have zero clue.

You know how I know something is really late? The phone rings.