Inconsistencies with Human Production Schedulers
An Auto parts manufacturer, who since its establishment, has manufactured pedal assemblies (accelerator, brake, and clutch), pulleys, press parts for small-sized, medium-sized, and large-sized cabs, as well as various other products such as sound barriers, pedestals (base parts for construction), seemed to have everything under control. But, they had major inadequacies. They used to output documents to each process once a week, these were generated based on orders, and were calculated by a mainframe computer without checking the load on the equipment. These were managed by scheduling specialists who worked out weekly schedules relying on their intuition and experiences. However, because of the independent way of scheduling, the process turned out to be “inconsistent”.
The company’s problems can be summarized by: extensive overtime work required to complete items by their due dates, putting more stress on their workers; daily overtime work for the person in-charge of planning to synchronize the schedules; and the aforementioned “inconsistency” that causes the other inadequacies.
Benefits after installing Asprova
To come up with a resolution to these problems, the company searched for a scheduling package that would be easy to install, has diverse standard features, and has a bulk production capacity. And fortunately, they came to know of Asprova which specializes in solving their top three problems, and then some. According to the staff from this Auto parts company, there were no problems regarding the “ease of installation” and, they were able to start actual operation in a relatively short period of four months.
After using Asprova, they experienced the following changes in their company: improved accuracy of the master data and the schedule, enabling reduction of the load on workers; the schedules are now to be created by just a single employee, rather than by two or more working overtime; it became definitely easier for the factory to increase the number of manufactured item types; and more importantly, they achieved consistency between processes, enabling smaller lot sizes and reduction of excess inventory, which could now be managed visually.
The company, has experienced all this and had attained synchronization of processes and inventory reduction.