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Subject of this
document: ASAP is not a delivery date!!
We
have a lot of funny ways to describe when jobs must be delivered. Hot
jobs, very hot, rush jobs, priority, top priority, must haves. Some
delivery dates look like “Oct 22 must have”. The most popular term
however must be ASAP. How vague is that? It looks like you might be
doing the right thing but not necessarily knowing what the right thing
is. Seasoned planning pros know you can never be late with an ASAP job!
ASAP -
so do you spell it out as A-S-A-P or consider it to be one word like
assap. Does it mean make this priority over everything else for the same
date or something else? Anybody can say asap. Lets put the accent on the
first syllable - that makes you sound really knowledgeable and important
- or does it? You can sound very smart and know nothing at all. At the
end of the day its mostly a great way of sounding as if you are doing
the right thing without knowing what the right thing is!!
Any
order that’s in a factory production planning and scheduling system
without a delivery date we know is a hidden time bomb ready to explode
at any moment. Customers are told when they are chasing this type of job
that it didn't have a specific date so why are they chasing it - leads
to unhappy customers? of course it does and the worst thing of all is
that nobody wins at this game. When a customer calls and says “where is
my job” if its an ASAP job then the scheduler says "it didn't have a
date mate" and this leads to customer dissatisfaction.
Delivery
on time is a very serious business.
Every
job is required at a specific time...... The board of directors must
have their reports. A mining company must have a wheel bearing for a
hundred tonne truck refurbished on time. The warehouse must have stock
replenishment for plumbing fittings so it can service its customers. Our
CEO takes off at 10 am and needs the paperwork on time. Will we miss the
truck that takes our product to the port for a specific containerised
shipment. Will we miss the courier that was told to get here at a
specific time.
We can
get really specific with deliveries from the date required to both the
time and date required. So as you can see in these examples we are
precise, but lets get really accurate and get down to partial deliveries
- and the management of partial quantities, stock draw offs and times
and dates.
Every
job on the planning white board in the production planning system needs
a delivery date.
Customers have their businesses to plan that may hinge upon our
products and services. Non performance in this area can have a chain
reaction and cost downstream businesses serious cash. A large proportion
of customers who change suppliers cite poor delivery performance as
their reason for doing so. Many companies do not have adequate planning
and scheduling systems, whiteboards or software. They do not know what
the capacity of their plant is and instruct their sales people to get
every order they can. Sales accept every request for delivery date the
customers wants. This gives the production staff no choice but to accept
and under management pressure try to keep everyone satisfied. You cannot
get "a quart in to a pint pot" so somewhere upon the line something
breaks.
A
culture of "so what" develops as production staff know they can never
succeed as long as management makes promises they can't deliver upon.
Worse than this is that the management tells the sales force to get
every job they can and for production to manufacture every job they get
from sales.
The
Business Case
Scheduling solutions whether manual planning boards or sophisticated
software provide the tools to manufacturing planning professionals to
get the job done. The factory has its capacity quantified and customers
are given accurate delivery dates. Scheduling solutions empower factory
staff to achieve on the basis of knowledge and are not given unrealistic
targets.
However
the business case is always based on an overall view of the enterprise
and if communication between departments or computer systems is not
working effectively then the business case just will not stack up.
Justification
of the implementation of a comprehensive scheduling tool can be in the
Customer Service area alone.
Visibility is given to customer service and sales but with
manufacturing feeding back accurate information that can be made visible
across the whole enterprise. Money can be made, money can be saved,
investments in factory assets can be made and modeled on the back of
accurate information from the scheduling tools available.
So
this is the business case - operational success in implementing these
systems in the manufacturing area leads to broad benefits across the
whole enterprise leading to customer satisfaction and and most
importantly customer retention.
Introduction
to Production Planning and Scheduling Software
Keyvak
provides a fantastic software tool for those of you not yet geared up
for an Advanced Scheduling Software system with the immense resource
required from your business for successful implementation. Take a look
at a product like The Planner, essentially an
out-of-the-box scheduler that's easy and fast to install and use. It has
the look and feel of an electronic whiteboard so fits in to the culture
of your business fast.
Keyvak
Pty Ltd
24th
July 2006
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