In 1984, I read a book called “The Goal” by Goldratt & Cox; the theory of constraints articulated in the book was formative in my thinking as an Industrial Engineer. I was surprised to learn that my son’s co-op employer gave it to him as required reading a couple of years ago as he was completing his Mechanical Engineering Technologist designation. This caused me to re-read it and appreciate again its timeless approach on improving any process.
The “AHA” moment in the book occurs when a scout troop led by the protagonist Alex Rogo, who is the father of one of the boys, sets out on their first day trek. It rapidly becomes apparent that they will not make camp by nightfall. Alex observes that the line of hikers is constantly stretching out with the fastest boys at the front waiting for the boys at the back to catch up. His solution is to re-arrange the boys by placing the slowest at the front. As they resume their hike, the bottleneck is no longer out of sight and becomes everyone’s focus. They then work on solving the problem and soon the contents of the slowest boy’s backpack are redistributed which speeds up the pace of the whole group.
Like a fast hiker leaving the rest of the group behind, creating more space between hikers, we find that the framing station on the wall panel line creates framed walls waiting for their turn at the sheathing station. I have been to several factories that have told me they are short of space because they need lots of room for the work in process in front of the sheathing station. They want to make sure that their framers do not have to wait for the sheathing station and lose productivity, but in the end, they still wait when the conveyor between stations fills up.
When we speed up the sheathing station and make it faster than the framing station, the work in process disappears, the whole line speeds up, and we need less space between stations. When automation eliminates shiners and rework, the need for a separate inspection station disappears as well. Now the extra factory space can be used for other things that generate sales and margin dollars.
The first step in automating a pre-fab factory is usually buying a saw to cut and mark components. This makes good sense as good quality at the start of the operation affects everything that follows. The next step should be to automate the sheathing station. We have designed our HyperLeap and ForwardLeap Sheathing Stations to solve this age-old constraint and speed up the entire process.
Reach out anytime to share stories of solving bottlenecks and discussing how we can help.