Re: Lead times

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Karl Hemilton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>I am working for an apparel manufacturing company and the customers
>are pushing us to reduce lead times and increase flexibility. Does any
>one have as idea as to how we can approach this. I can give you
>specific details if need.

It seems worth looking at concretely what's going on. What activities
are principal contributors to your lead times? Digesting the
customer's new requirements in such a way that it can be easily
communicated to those who need to know? Reconfiguring equipment?
Hiring people from other projects to meet the demand? Basically, when
a new order comes in, what's most of the order-related activity that's
happening during the lead time? Or do you need to improve your data
collection just so you can adequately diagnose the problem's
aetiology?

Abstractly, with no more information, I'd suggest that the
manufacturing equipment needs to support fast, easy switching to a
diverse range of new products, and your employees have to have a deep
enough understanding of the customer requirements and the workings of
the manufacturing line equipment to be capable of quickly figuring out
a good way to approach the new order, and to be sufficiently empowered
to work together to decide and act on what they've figured out. It's
amazing how clever people can be with a little support and trust (and
oversight (-:). Of course, dysfunctionality can come from all sorts of
things, from poorly-organised paths of communication, to mismatches
between who's responsible for stuff and who actually does it in
practice.

Of course, if the lead time is largely due to constraints put on you
by the other organisations to whom you outsource various stuff, then
your attention needs to go there instead.

-- Mark