Building Better Businesses

Improve organizational design and structure to better support the engineering and product development processes.

This includes defining an appropriate balance between horizontal (program) and vertical (function) dimensions; the best team/teaming structure; insuring effective cross-disciplinary integration for optimal project execution; work balance, flexible deployment, and productivity of engineering staff; and insuring functional leaders focus on staff development and functional excellence instead of the vagaries of project management.

Establish effective multi-project management.

Capacity management tools are developed that assist in load leveling, identify bottlenecks with key resources (e.g., FEA/math modeling staff or special lab equipment) and enable remediation. We define means to financially support sufficient engineering staff through internal opportunity mining (e.g., value engineering with existing products) to enable peak load management and rapid response to opportunities.

Clearly identify and prioritize the best product development opportunities, including enhanced sales and quoting processes.

This would include effective opportunity screening filters, efficient quoting systems, full information gathering, strong voice-of-customer characterization, customer relation management, market intelligence systems, and portfolio management.

Manage and effectively integrate innovation programs with product development.

This ensures high value innovations are identified and completed in advance of product development so that they are off the critical path in program execution. In addition to design innovations, it includes manufacturing process innovations that enable higher value product designs.

Realize effective engineering work flow.

This includes effective up-front engineering processes that effectively scope the project, identify risks and information needs, and define the strongest concepts and technical approaches. It ensures strong concurrent engineering to ensure effective design from all disciplinary perspectives and thorough exploration of the design space to create highest value. Rework is minimized and supplier, process engineering, and product design activities are fully integrated.

Enhance technology development and organizational learning.

This includes development of tools for organizing, effectively applying, and continuously updating new learning with each product development cycle. We help define roles for design strategies such as platform engineering, modularity, and set-based methods.

Sufficiently document and train the PD process.

This includes standardized work; roles, responsibilities, and decision authority; full process documentation; tools/forms/procedures addressing issues such as scoping, information management, PFMEA/DFMEA, etc.; process mapping; and training programs.

Deploy strong daily management systems.

We provide software tools and procedures to ensure adherence to process and standardize work; to track progress and recognize issues at their incipient stage; and to show the progress in meeting program goals and problem solving. We train your teams and leaders how to follow this systematic approach that helps ensure project are completed on time, within budget, with exceptional results and effective advancement of learning.

Enhanced up-front design process.

The original process started with a reference case and the job passed sequentially through functional efforts by mechanical design, controls, and fluid power engineering departments to adapt the reference design to the current customer’s needs. This process resulted in late discovery of technical issues, rework, ineffective designs, cost overruns and late delivery. It was replaced by a process where an interdisciplinary project team comprised of experts in the product family would start by constructing a new system-level analytical model. This model first establishes performance requirements for each machine, interfacing needs, and footprint. Subsequently, system timing charts are defined that specified key requirements and enabled structural design, controls engineering and fluid power work to proceed quickly and concurrently. The team identifies performance enhancement and cost saving concepts up front. Rework is avoided, risk issues are identified early and machine interfacing is given strong attention. Using this process, not only was engineering design faster, there have been major technical discoveries that have boosted system performance and reduced cost, making the company’s products far more desirable.

A new system for design standardization, learning, and application.

This system has had major implications on the efficiency and quality of both the quoting and engineering design process. It consists of certified design lots and confirmed proposals. Certified design lots are established on an ongoing basis as new products are designed. Major subsystems are now extensively tested during run-out to establish their full range of capability (speed, rates, material types the machine can handle, etc.), understanding performance and capability beyond the scope of design of the current project. Moreover, field performance is closely monitored and design weaknesses corrected. Once these refinements are established, certified design lots are developed for use in future design and quoting activities. In a parallel effort, a modular confirmed proposal library has also been established based on key historical reference design cases, insuring the design is fully accurate and bills of material and costs are up to date. Collectively, the certified lots and confirmed proposals are documented with descriptive writings, analytical models, engineering drawings, budgetary data, performance data, application ranges, vendor quotes on purchased components (that are routinely updated), etc., to provide a basis for future designs and proposal development. This has enabled:

– Highly-efficient, modular plug-and-play construction of detailed and accurate quotes and technical proposals,
– A firm basis for pull-and-release engineering when appropriate,
– Reliable and complete reference cases for initiating design of new products with strong guidance on the best technical solutions to accommodate unique customer needs in the new case, and
– A strong foundation for design standardization and modular design

A novel pull-based approach to multi-project management.

Under the new process, during up-front planning, design and manufacturing teams meet to systematically plan execution of the new project. Overall machine build sequences for large systems are defined that match engineering lead-time needs and available capacity (engineering, machining, assembly) across the value stream. A small number of assembly bays are dedicated to the new project, each assigned a sequence of machines or subsystems to build, and the bays assemble concurrently. A lot release sequence (lots are a set of related purchased and internally machined components) is defined that will enable efficient assembly and this is the sequence that work is released from engineering detailing (where manufacturing drawings and bills of material are produced) into purchasing and machining. A special pull system is used to manage activities across the value stream on a day-to-day basis. This system keeps a small, constant buffer of work ahead of each bay at all times, one that maintains the lots in the desired sequence. It enables effective prioritization of work from engineering into manufacturing. Engineering keeps a queue of released BoMs and drawings and has clear visibility of manufacturing’€™s needs so that it completes the right detailing job at the right time. (Detailing is the most time consuming component of engineering and the most critical to manage.) This system has greatly enhanced on-time project completion and has improved assembly efficiency by 40%. A related program to enhance the procurement process has significantly reduced purchased component costs, significantly increasing project margins.

Major changes in organizational structure and leadership roles to enable an effective matrix management approach.

This approach insured effective work flow through the various functional departments, rapid response to execution problems, and strong accountability for results at all levels.

Transition from ineffective functional execution and excessive work handoffs to interdisciplinary team execution of all programs.

Local and cross-regional teams were established and assigned to select sets of similar programs. This enabled them to take advantage of inter-program synergies; achieve work balance for team members; insure full integration of product design, process development, and supply chain development; insure ownership and accountability to management for design performance as well as time and budgetary control, and to insure fast work flow. Select teams were static with new projects added to their plate as old ones were wrapped up. This facilitated capacity management and enabled exceptional skill building and learning over time.

A capacity management tool to identify and negotiate work execution bottlenecks

(focusing on key engineering/technical and testing resources) in a complex multi-project environment.

A system for advance deployment of new product development teams.

An aggressive program was initiated to identify product maintenance opportunities, i.e., cost savings projects involving minor design improvements, warranty cost reductions, or supply chain improvements. These opportunities are used to fund new engineering teams. In turn, this approach prevents resource crunches as new development programs are launched and insures teams are experienced and effective prior to their initiation of key development projects.

Strong concurrent engineering immediately upon program launch,

insuring effective integration of product engineering, testing and validation, process development engineering and early supplier involvement. This methodology enables high value creation and dramatically shortens execution timelines by reducing iteration and rework.

Changes in testing and validation laboratory management

that insured that the right projects were being worked on at the right time and that all testing was value-add. Bench scale labs were established for different product families so that such testing could be integrated early in the product development process.

Establishment of an advanced process development engineering group

to focus on new manufacturing processes from a “€œmanufacturability for design”€ perspective, where new manufacturing processes would open doors to enhance product functionality and value.

Proactive identification of strategic customers.

Rather than reacting to opportunities that came along, the companies sought to build relationship and business with customers that made strategic business sense. This included companies that produced products in growth sectors, enhanced diversification, had strong track records in early supplier involvement for collaborative product and process design, and products with strong fit to the suppliers,€™ operations. Concerning fit, one fabricator looked to identify unique processing opportunities so that it could grow its internal capabilities to provide higher value service solutions to its clients. For example, this might involve enhancing its already extensive “œplate-to-paint”€ capability for manufacture of large machined weldments to incorporate technologies such as select automation and robotics to reduce labor costs for high volume production or an ability to integrate new products with existing large tack and weld fixtures so that tooling and floor space requirements could be minimized, lowering costs. There was a strong effort to identify these customers, understand their needs, and impress them through strong proposals that provided valuable feedback and high value for the customer while demonstrating the high competency of this firm.

Early supplier involvement in product design.

There was strong effort to build relationships and engage the customers in Design, Process, and Assembly Review (DPAR) at the early stages in product design so that opportunities to reduce cost and enhance manufacturability were captured and information for process design fully documented. Even when customers had only weak supplier involvement in the design process, there was a strong early effort to clarify customer needs and manufacturing issues as well as provide feedback on design improvements that might be possible.

Strategic Investment in Process Development at the Quoting Stage

Systems were developed for classifying quoting opportunities and status. In situations where there was strong likelihood of quoting success, or strong value in impressing a strategic customer, the process development process was immediately launched. The supplier recognized that quoting itself directly addresses the key issues and tasks of process development. With careful design of the quoting process, this information can be augmented at little cost and captured to make it highly useful in process development. For example, information for quoting was directly captured in a full bill of materials during the quoting process so time would not be wasted in setting BoMs up once the customer awarded the purchase order. Process design was established carefully with an eye to eliminating waste. Fixture, template, and tooling designs were developed and drawings completed, fully addressing needs and opportunities to improve process safety, quality, capacity utilization, and efficiency. Under the current state, it was common to rush process development in order to meet tight delivery deadlines that the customer had imposed. In such a circumstance, these process development opportunities were short-circuited. Moreover, it was rare for them to come back and attend to them at a latter point in time. With the new system, these processing devices were fully designed and the supplier was ready to pull the trigger for purchase and fabrication as soon as the P.O. was awarded. This effort included multi-disciplinary input from key technical specialists at the supplier where appropriate.

Capacity Analysis

Careful analysis was undertaken to define how the capacity needs for the new process could be delivered in the most cost effective manner. Plant layout itself was modified in one facility so that machine operators could be flexibly deployed to concurrently run multiple products without equipment moves so that very high labor utilization could be realized on long machining cycles. Cases where low run ratios (the ratio of actual to planned manufacturing cycle times) were forcing investment in new equipment were identified and continuous improvement teams were dispatched to solve the problem so equipment purchases could be avoided. Special fixture solutions were developed so that new products could be added to existing work centers with minimal capital costs and no additional floor space needs.

Team Execution in a Standardized Work System

Teams would be formed for each new process development project and they folled an effective standardized work process. This included strong interdisciplinary efforts early in the process to integrate safety, quality, tooling, machine and manual work design efforts; strong communications; clearly delineated roles and responsibilities; and clear timetable and procedure for execution. The teams fully piloted and refined the new process.

Performance Targeting and Closure Rule

A standard analytical procedure was developed to identify process wastes, opportunities for improvement germane to the type of manufacturing process, capacity utilization effectiveness, quality targets, and quoted standards. These are used to establish performance targets for the process. The team is not allowed to disband the effort until these targets are realized and sustained for a significant interval of time. Moreover, the process development team uses structured problem solving methods to close the gaps. A final report out to top management documents team performance during the project and confirms attainment of the goals. It is also used to capture lessons learned to improve future process development activities.

Custom Tracking Tool and Daily Management System

Special tracking tools were developed and implemented and such tools provide valuable support for effective process execution and management. The specific roles of this tool included:

• Communication of key information to the entire work team.

  This includes key decisions, requirements, and plans along with identification of missing information and what is being done to obtain that information.

• Clarification of status of all work activities.

  This includes early identification of schedule slips and explanation and status of all ongoing problem-solving efforts to countermeasure complications that have surfaced. Budgets are planned prior to process development and conformance is reported on a daily basis. In addition, performance of the process, once initially operational, is tracked and expressed in terms of KPIs such as scrap rates, process capability, labor content, machine cycle times (as required for the capacity utilization plan), changeover times, and realized run ratios. Deviations from KPI targets are noted as are the specific activities being undertaken to close the gaps as mentioned above.

• Reinforcement of standardized work.

  The tool, including steps, schedules, responsibilities, forms, etc., it set up around the defined standardized work process. It provides descriptive information on the process at appropriate steps. It requires that the standardized process be followed, that responsible persons report their activities and that results are posted.

• Embedded Guidelines, Checklists, and Technical Procedures.

  These are aids and analytical procedures to assist in effective process execution. They include items such as quoting checklists to insure full cost recovery, gauge selection criteria, tooling selection criteria, safety checklists, etc.

• Support of the Daily Management System.

  The tracking tool is available to all team members and management. Everyone is responsible for self-reporting and updating information. Regular team meetings and management reviews are held as part of the daily management system. Problems are highly visible and there is ownership and accountability to resolve these issues in an effective and timely manner.