The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a powerful improvement technology that asserts that any manageable system is limited in achieving its goals by a very small number of constraints. Developed by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, it provides a useful way to understand and manage complex industrial processes. One of the key concepts of TOC is … Read more
The term Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) evolved from the parts manufacturing and assembly industry in Japan. Its parallel evolution with the Toyota Production System during the 1950’s thru 1960’s makes it intimately linked with Lean. The concept of TPM can be confusing for some managers in the process industry who ask; Is TPM a maintenance … Read more
You know the signs, the factory keeps missing production schedules and you keep depleting finished goods inventory. Its now so bad that you are missing vital customer orders and some customers are threatening to delist. This is a common story and here we use a scenario based on actual events to illustrate how an understanding … Read more
Capacity decisions made at the time of asset procurement have a huge strategic effect on the long term competitiveness of a manufacturing operation. This is particularly true in the process industry where most of the factories use Flow Lines.
In this article we explain how flow lines are designed as well as the supply chain system benefits of un-balancing flow lines, i.e. adding extra capacity upstream and downstream of a flow line’s bottleneck.
Maintenance management can be something of a thankless job, not helped by the differences in how people define maintenance and reliability. In most cases the reliability of a factory is delegated to the maintenance manager however few can articulate the difference between reliability and maintenance. Even fewer can define the difference between normal maintenance and … Read more