Production Management
Client
A signature Greek stationery production company with a strong presence in many other international markets.
IndustryManufacturing & EngineeringServicesExpense ReductionCategoryProduction Management
The Result
The client implemented a production management system affecting all business aspects. It can forecast needs, calculate human resources, anticipate sales seasonality and accurately plan purchase of raw material. The implementation of which, translated into quantifiable data and delivered the following outcomes:
- The planning horizon increased from one week to 3 months.
- A 25% productivity increase was achieved, in a key department.
- The combined efforts led to a headcount reduction within the organisation, of 3 within a year.
The Challenge
1
The Client had a complex production process, in place, with many finished goods, multiple semi-finished products and a large number of machines whose operators reallocated constantly. There had been no structured way to measure performance and capacity and no planning “tools” were used. All activity was determined on a day-to day basis. Moreover, we identified an absence of “tools” to access and combine sales needs (demand planning), define production capacity (production planning) and purchase of raw materials (material planning). In addition to the latter, one of its main departments OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) was measured at a 62% (low) and there was indication of personnel overcapacity of over 30%.
The Method
2
To ensure an optimum production management system would be installed:
- We used the Client’s routings and actual production data, going back multiple years to create a thorough mapping of its machine capacity loading. This highlighted the spare capacity in some machines and the marginal capacity in others
- We created multiple planning tools in order to create a both long and short term production plan and the relevant raw material needs
- We applied performance management methodology in its main machines, created the relevant KPIs and used on line measurement systems to assess productivity