Essential Foundation for Implementing Job Shop Lean
Designing a facility layout that facilitates delay-free material flow in an HMLV factory is the essential foundation for Job Shop Lean. Kiyoshi Suzaki, who consulted for Toyota, has devoted an entire chapter (Chapter 4 Developing Flow on the Production Floor) in his book[1]. Quoting from his book “The importance of factory layout has not been addressed in spite of the significant waste often associated with badly planned layouts. The impact on a company’s performance from improving the layout can be substantial. Flow refers to the movement of material through the plant. It assumes that material will not be stagnant at any point in time from the receiving of raw material to the shipping of finished products. Problems such as a process-oriented layout (Functional Layout), line imbalance, machine breakdowns, long setup or tool-change time, machine breakdown, quality problems, and labor absenteeism cause interruptions that disrupt a steady flow of production in a factory”. Therefore, any HMLV (high-mix low-volume) manufacturer seeking to implement Job Shop Lean should invest in re-design of their factory from the ground up in order to achieve delay-free material flow in their factory.
Software to Design Factory Layouts for Flow
So how does a high-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturer, especially a job shop, go about it doing this? The answer is surely not by using pencil-and-paper methods like Value Stream Mapping and Spaghetti Diagrams! Here is a sample of software tools that I have found useful to implement different Job Shop Lean projects:
Project | Commercial Software to Execute This Project |
Value Stream Mapping | eVSM MixFlexSimMinitab WorkspaceSimul8 |
Time and Motion Study | ema Work DesignerProPlannerTimer ProOTRS10 |
Part Family Formation | JMPMinitabPFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit) |
Factory Layout | ema Plant DesignerFlow PlannerLAYOUT-IQPFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit)SIMOGGAVisual ComponentsvisTABLE |
Process and System Simulation | FlexSimSimioSimul8Visual Components |
Master Scheduling | Intuiflow Protected Flow ManufacturingSimio DDMRP (Demand Driven MRP) |
Production Planning and Inventory Control | Factory Physics CSUITE |
Finite Capacity Scheduling | LEKIN (Academic Scheduling System)ORTEMSOpCenterSchedlyzerTactic |
Machine Monitoring and Manufacturing Execution Systems | FactoryWizHarmoniMachineMetricsMerlinPlex MES |
Re-Tooling your ERP System to Support Job Shop Lean
If an HMLV manufacturer has the appropriate data captured in their ERP system, each of the three major steps to implement Lean in high-mix low-volume (HMLV) environments could be implemented using some of the software tools listed above as follows:
- Map the value stream: Part families can be formed using the Cluster Analysis module in any commercial statistical analysis package such as Minitab or PFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit).
- Create flow: A variety of factory layouts and detailed layouts of individual cells can be designed using a combination of PFAST, Flow Planner, visTABLE and SIMIO.
- Establish pull: The controlled release of orders into production subject to finite capacity constraints could be done using FPCSUITE. And, the detailed scheduling and sequencing of orders at individual work centers could be done using a Finite Capacity Scheduler (FCS) like Opcenter, Plataine or Tactic.
[1] Suzaki, K. (1988). The new manufacturing challenge: Techniques for continuous improvement. New York, NY: The Free Press.