Manufacturing at the speed of business

Engineering and Construction Matters with Innocent Chatikobo

Today, manufacturers live with a fundamental fact of life: customers have more power than ever, and they have constantly shifting needs and rising expectations in terms of innovative products and shorter lead times.

To thrive, manufacturers need to work with speed and responsiveness. To meet customer needs and increase profits , they must reduce their time to market and time to volume.

To keep up with unforeseen shifts in demand and supply, they must be able to quickly adapt manufacturing processes to respond to changing situations and must also cope with increasing complexities. To serve all types of customers, they need to simultaneously manage a mix of production strategies such as

Make to stock

Make to order

Assemble to order

Configure to order

In a business climate marked by intense competitive pressure, there is need to enhance agility and reduce costs. The key to that is to integrate manufacturing more closely with business – i.e. to link manufacturing with other business systems and processes and with supply chain partners, so that manufacturing can stay in sync with supply and demand.

Production facilities often scramble to keep up with changing requirements because manufacturing systems and processes are often fragmented and disconnected from customers and suppliers. Because of this, costs go up, responsiveness goes down, and manufacturers find it difficult to drive higher speed and efficiency.

Use of manufacturing systems can assist companies meet those broad range of challenges. These manufacturing systems e.g. SAP offer comprehensive, integrated capabilities that increase your visibility into manufacturing operations , improve responsiveness to customer demands and ensure that manufacturing can run at the speed of your business in a constantly changing world.

Systems enable companies to establish truly adaptive manufacturing operations. It gives managers and shop floor production personnel real time visibility into information about production, supply, demand and manufacturing processes.

With this they can take quick, appropriate action to solve problems and adapt to changes. Manufacturing operations consist of activities such as:

i. Manufacturing planning—matching supply and demand in production plans, basing production sequences on actual material / resources and capacity constraints on the shop floor

ii. Manufacturing execution and monitoring — directing, tracking and managing the flow of work on the shop floor to meet planned production targets. There is allocation of personnel during work shifts based on qualifications, availability and tasks to be performed. Tools, equipment and machinery necessary for operations are also allocated

iii. Quality management — drive product quality and ensure standards compliance. Improve quality while lowering quality – related costs through timely detection, analysis and resolution of quality issues

iv. Maintenance management — minimise breakdowns and reduce maintenance costs with predictive and preventive maintenance

v. Environmental, health and safety — proactively address health concerns and reduce risks in manufacturing operations by tracking health information and identifying trends. Ensure safe handling, storage and tracking hazardous materials. In the manufacturing processes and operations, industry uses different approaches in a bid to produce at the speed of business and ensure timeous supply of required goods and services. Manufacturing can be for an order or for stock. Some of the common manufacturing approaches are

Make to stock — to ensure addition into the inventory. This is done with standard products which are usually bought by walk in customers

Make to order — this is customer specific

Assemble to order — bringing together parts to make a required product

Configure to order — adjustment of existing stock products to suit customer specifications

Lean manufacturing — producing high quality products while reducing costs and improving customer satisfaction

Project manufacturing — manufacturing targeted at an ongoing project eg fabrication of fencing posts and standards for a fencing project underway

Repetitive manufacturing — producing large quantities of identical or similar products on a continuous basis. It’s also known as mass production or flow production

Continuous manufacturing —where materials are continuously fed into a system and transformed into a final product without interruption . It’s also known as continuous processing or continuous flow manufacturing.

Manufacturing with final assembly — involves manufacturing components or subassemblies separately and then assembling them into a final product as orders are received. It’s also known as assemble to order production

Manufacturing without final assembly — involves manufacturing complete products in advance without a specific customer order. The products are then stored in inventory until they are sold or distributed. This is also known as make to stock production

(This article is an extract from a yet to be published book by the columnist)

Innocent Chatikobo is an engineer by profession with AtroServe Engineering Zimbabwe. He has extensive knowledge and experience in structural engineering and construction.

For your comments, views, questions and feedback he can be contacted on the following platforms. Cell: +263 777 950 224; +263 712 376 037; +263 782 502 732; Email: [email protected]; Like the Facebook page: AtroServe Engineering Zimbabwe; Follow the Whatsapp Channel: AtroServe Engineering Zimbabwe