Many clients today require a variety of products in small quantities forcing the manufacturing industries to offer rapid delivery of such products. Also, customers expect that they should be able to make an order of any design at any time but at lower costs. This applies to all the customers whether distributer, retailer, end user, or original equipment manufacturer. Therefore, manufacturers are continuously adopting Just-in-Time (JIT) cellular manufacturing because it offers the required technology and capacity to make several small deliveries of quality products frequently (Dixon, 2013). These capabilities increase business productivity of all the assets incusing space, human resource, cash, inventory, and equipment.
Cellular manufacturing is a technique in manufacturing where workstations and equipment are organized to allow continuous flow production of many small and quality products (Maxwel, 2018). All the processes that are needed to manufacture a sub assembly or a component and placed close together in a manufacturing cell mostly in a U-shaped design facilitation fast response between the processes when issues or problems arise. The people working the manufacturing cells have enough training to carrying out several tasks as required. In cellular manufacturing, machines are categorized together according to the group of parts they produce minimizing the distance that the products, people, materials, and inventory have to go through during the manufacturing process and also increases the lead times.
The further describes the difference between the JIT cellular manufacturing and traditional manufacturing.
Figure 1: Traditional Vs. JIT Cellular Manufacturing
(Source: Yang, 2014)
This paper will focus on discussing the various challenges and problems that Standard Motor Products faced before adopting JIT cellular manufacturing. Secondly, it will discuss how JIT cellular manufacturing have solve the problems that the company was facing. Finally, propose the various warehouse management strategies and software that the company can implement in the warehouse in Virginia.
Before Standard Motor adopted the JIT cellular manufacturing, the production process was slow and required a lot of effort and energy from all the production assets. The various manufacturing system were placed in different locations such as basement, first floor, while others had to be shipped to the warehouse. This was a very costly and time-consuming process and could not allow customers to order for products in small quantities. If a customer needed 500 parts, the company had to produce 3000 parts in order to avoid setting a 300-ton production machines to produce only 500 parts. it was difficult to receive and send orders while maintain the accuracy of the inventory in the traditional manufacturing process. Lead time could not be predicted making it difficult to customize product and spare parts to meet the customer preferences.
In the traditional process, many employees were involved in the supply chain such as manufacturers, workers, product salesmen, and company managers; in this setup all the other parts are affected if something goes wrong in the supply chain.
The traditional approach that was adopted by Standard Motors tried to address the inventory issues that the company was facing such as manufacturing process, order quantity process, better forecasting, reduce lead time, or adjusting levels of stock. However, this approach did not sufficiently address these issues. Poor execution is one of the common problems that is faced by the company at all supply chain levels. The lead time was high making the process of manufacturing and production long. The location of the various manufacturing machines and tools were located on different areas making the production of one part to take longer time because of the longer distance that the materials have to travel during production process. The work-in-progress were up to 15000 caps, lead time was 20 days, and the machines occupied bigger space because some of the machines were idle and were not adding any value in the production process.
The company could not take on demand orders because the machines could not be operated just to produce small amount of parts and thus, if a client makes an order of 300 parts then the company would be obliged to produce over 3000 part because the machines are over 300 tons and thus producing few parts would be costly to the company. The communication between the different production parties was poor across the entire supply chain because of the inconsistency of the work environment. As such, it made it difficult for the get deeper insights about the various production processes and performance. The quality of decisions made was poor because of the insufficient data available for data analysts making the process of collaboration difficult. Managers requires enough amount of data to enable them make the most informed decision to drive the business operations.
By adopting JIT cellular manufacturing, the company is now experiencing reduced setup time required machines, devices, operations and other equipment needed in the manufacturing process. Parts with relatively same sizes and shapes are designed and processed in the same manufacturing cells to reduce the changes and adjustments made on the tools and machines in processing the same parts reducing the setup time. The company is also enjoying the reduced time and cost in handling the manufacturing materials including storing, moving, controlling, and protecting. Moreover, the distance that materials have to flow during manufacturing is greatly reduced translating to reduced overall manufacturing time and cost (Hamedi, Esmaeilian and Ismail, 2011). In cellular manufacturing, materials only travel short distance (within a cell) because machines are placed in close proximity.
Utilization of machines is improved in cellular manufacturing since one machine can be used to produce more that on product in every cell. All the unnecessary tools and machines are identified and eliminated from the production process. Idle time for every machine is also reduced since their utilization have been optimized. Moreover, by adopting JIT cellular manufacturing, Standard Motor has been able to reduce manufacturing lead time because of the reduced time of handling materials, setting up machines, reduced material flow distance, reduced worked in progress, and enhanced utilization of machines (Zhu, 2017).
The company also wanted to operate based on customer demands and produce what the customer wants, integrate molding and finishing into one operation. The aim was to reduce raw materials and cut the floor space needed, finished goods in inventories, and work in progress. The radical changes that have been brought about by JIT cellular manufacturing have enhanced company operations from setup, floor layout, attitude and training of every level of management and employees. The cells at Standard have been configured so as they are self-contained and facilitates production of parts of same family in one dedicated cell or people and machinery. Before the new manufacturing system was adopted, the company had more that 15000 caps of work in progress daily but the new JIT cellular manufacturing has reduced this gap to 100 caps per cell per day. Goods in inventory have been reduced to less than one month from earlier where it was two to three months. The company is greatly benefiting from the implementation of JIT cellular manufacturing to its finishing and molding operations. The company can now save hundreds of thousands of dollars because of the reduce inventory. Additionally, floor space has been reduced by 66% and work in progress by 94%, the lead time has reduced to 4 days from 20 days, and 97% completion rate.
The company stored finished goods, components, and raw materials there. Following the implementation of JIT, Standard eliminated the New York warehouse. The company now makes and stores raw materials and components in the factory. The quality of parts produced has been improved because a small team work in one area to complete the manufacturing process and this motivates them to address challenges of similar kind that they may face in the future. Response on problems and issues related to quality are reported quickly therefore improving the quality of product in cellular manufacturing (Pisuchpen, 2012).
The profit will increase daily by achieving all the above benefits, this will translate to employees getting more incentives and their pay increased motivating them and increasing work morale. Cellular manufacturing simplifies the manufacturing process making it easy for employees to complete the manufacturing operations.
Alternate warehousing strategies and software
Warehousing Strategies
Warehouse management and operation plays a very crucial responsibility in the growth of any industry or business. As such, it is necessary for companies to adopt proper strategies to ensure that processes are made efficient and translates to ultimate success of the company. A warehouse strategy entails several essential decisions such as operations and investment costs that make up the logistics overhead (Abdul Rehman Khan, 2017). Before creating or adopting a warehouse strategy, it is important that a company follow the following six steps when devising a strategic plan (Woollard, 2014):
With the increasing orders and demands or the spare parts, Standard Motor should continuously identify and invest in more effective and efficient strategies to optimize its warehouse. There several core set of components that needs to be considered to enhance the efficiency of the warehouse in order to align the warehouse with the business strategies. This document will propose various warehouse strategies that Standard Motor can adopt in the Virginia warehouse. The strategies that are discussed below are aimed at removing any activities that does not add value to the business and focus on those that are most important to the company for driving the business operations (Payne, 2018). These strategies help in bringing the logistic requirements of the business to align with the business strategy and help Standard Motor to remain competitive in the manufacturing industry. The following are the alternative warehouse strategies:
The company should focus on minimizing the time wasted in moving goods or employees. It is important to adopt methods that condenses the pick face, enable employees to work smarter, and reduce travel time (Worldmagazine, 2018). The workers tend to spend more time travelling between pick and this depends on the size of the operation. Some of the alternative solutions include dynamic slotting, optimized flow paths, and flow rack.
Orders should be moved to zones. This strategy increases the efficiency and speed of material flow in order consolidation and assembly. Order containers should be sent only to the zones where picking operation is needed. Possible alternative strategies include pick carts, conveyor network, and zone routes.
Sort and batch order. By concurrently picking and categorizing stock keeping units (SKU) for several orders, the pickers will be more efficient and productive. The picker of the orders will not need to travel to the same pick location severally (Worldmagazine, 2018). Possible solutions include sort, pick to tote, and pick carts.
Replenishment, split case selection, and eliminate travel. The company should consider strategies and systems that bring inventory to the picker in one zone instead of having pickers travelling into the ware house to find and take split case items. Possible solutions include automated staging system for inventory to support goods to person pick stations.
There are several software packages, both commercial and opensource, that the company can implement to help in managing the warehouse. These software packages are further classified into three types, that is, standalone system that is installed on premise using business’ native network and hardware system, cloud-based system which is a software-as-a-service cloud technology that offer scalability, disaster recovery, flexibility, and security, and finally ERP module which is integrated as an enterprise resource planning solution as a component (Chalotra, 2011). The warehouse management software seeks to address the different problems and issues that warehouse faces and address the various business needs based on complexity, nature, and size of their operations. Standard Motor company will be launching a new warehouse in Virginia and thus it should have the most reliable software that guarantees availability and high performance. This is one of the reasons why the different software vendors are offering products with capabilities and features that can accommodate the increasing operational needs of the business form simple inventory to comprehensive functions that cover point-to-point management needs of a bigger company (Predictiveanalyticstoday, 2018). Some of the key features that the warehouse management software should have include:
Based on these requirements, the recommended warehouse management software that Standard Motor can implement in the Virginia warehouse is oracle WMC. This is a web-based warehouse management platform that combines fulfillment functions and robust warehouse management with speed of cloud systems and cost-efficiency (Wang and Shen, 2013). This system gives the company with operational value though configurable and dynamic solutions providing the features to increase overall inventory visibility and accuracy, improve on-time delivery and shipments, and support order fulfillment operations (Hillsberg, 2018). The figure below shows an overview of the Oracle WMC.
Figure 2: Oracle WMC
(Source: Hillsberg, 2018)
Some of the highlights of this system include (Wu, Luo and Ba, 2011):
As such, this system will fully meet the requirements of the Virginia warehouse.
Conclusion
Cellular manufacturing is a technique in manufacturing where workstations and equipment are organized to allow continuous flow production of many small and quality products. All the processes that are needed to manufacture a sub assembly or a component and placed close together in a manufacturing cell mostly in a U-shaped design facilitation fast response between the processes when issues or problems arise. In the traditional process, many employees were involved in the supply chain such as manufacturers, workers, product salesmen, and company managers; in this setup all the other parts are affected if something goes wrong in the supply chain. Idle time for every machine is also reduced since their utilization have been optimized. Moreover, by adopting JIT cellular manufacturing, Standard Motor has been able to reduce manufacturing lead time because of the reduced time of handling materials, setting up machines, reduced material flow distance, reduced worked in progress, and enhanced utilization of machines.
References List
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