Production Flow Analysis

During the past ten years the people behind QDC Business Engineering have performed several Production Flow Analyses (PFA) in manufacturing industries. In short, PFA provides well-established, efficient and analytical engineering method for planning the change from “process organisation” to “product organisation”. This means that traditional production layouts are transformed into production groups, which each make a particular set of parts and is equipped with a particular set of machines and equipment enabling them to complete the assigned parts. The following figure illustrates the conventional process layout and its corresponding product based layout after PFA has been applied.


Traditional Process Layout

 

The resulting overall material flow between functional cells.

Product Layout

 

The resulting smooth material flow between dedicated product groups.


Complex material flow systems resulting from process based production layouts have long throughput times, high inventories and work in progress, which increase cost and reduce profitability. From the organisation’s point of view, delegation and control are difficult to implement, which leads to bureaucratic and centralised management structures, thus increasing overhead. Applying PFA produces a plan to change the layout and organisation in such a way that production throughput times can be reduced radically, while at the same time inventories go down and delivery punctuality and quality improve to a completely new level. QDC has applied the method successfully in several manufacturing industries, especially in job-shops and electronics industries, but good results have also been obtained in service industries. Once the layout has been changed to a product based one, new and simple production scheduling routines have been implemented to ensure excellent delivery performance.

Anticipated results

Companies that have gone through PFA and the resulting change to product based layout, have experienced the following positive effects:

·        in operations management: reduced production throughput times, significantly less capital tied into the material flow and improved delivery performance;

·        in general management: makes it possible to delegate the responsibility for component quality, cost and completion by due-date to the group level, which in turn reduced overhead;

·        in worker’s motivation: clearer responsibilities and decision making on the spot increase job satisfaction;

·        in the point of information technology: simplified material flow speeds up the implementation of factory automation and simplifies software applications used to support efficient operations.

The content of Production Flow Analysis

The main method of the PFA is a quantitative analysis of all the material flows taking place in the factory, and using this information and the alternative routings to form manufacturing groups that are able to finish a set parts with the resources dedicated to it. Depending on the scale of the project this logic is applied on company, factory, group, line and tooling level respectively. Whichever the case, the work breaks down into the following steps:

·        to identify and classify all production resources, machines and equipment;

·        to track the all product and part routes that the company, factory or group produces;

·        to analyse the manufacturing network through the main flows formed by the majority of parts;

·        to study alternative routings and grouping of the machines to fit parts into a simplified material flow system;

·        to further study those exceptional parts not fitting into the grouping of production resources;

·        to validate the new material flow system and implementing the scheduling system based on single-piece flow.

Most production units and their layouts are the result of organic growth, during which the products have experienced many changes affecting the arsenal of the equipment in the workshop. This continuously evolving change process leads in conventional factories into complex material flow systems. PFA reveals the natural grouping of production resources like the following small-scale yet real-world example shows.

The Machine-Part matrix as raw data gathered in the first steps of the PFA

 

The Machine-Part matrix reorganised into natural groups that finish parts.

 
Most of our previous cases have focused on the forming of groups in job-shops, which are part of a larger production facility. These test cases have been used as eye-openers for the rest of the organisation. Our recommendation, however, is to continue with PFA on higher level. Product and component allocation in the whole supply chain combined with product and customer segmentation is an area where not only vast savings in operating costs can be achieved, but also competitive advantage can be created.

Manufacturing science knows numerous cases where complete product-oriented re-organisation of the company has produced staggering results in productivity, throughput times and competitive advantage. PFA is one of the few systematic engineering methods for achieving these results.

Production Flow Analysis was developed by Professor John L. Burbidge of the Cranfield Institute of Technology.

Contact: info@qdc.fi