Fabrication Activities (from workshops to maintenance)
"In this particular area, there is nothing more interesting and formative than the ground. Where ever you come from you cannot really understand what is happening in the workshops until you spent sufficient time there to see all the details that make the difference at the end of the day. What is the most complicated ? Production on sales orders with many configurations available, in small series, with workshops organized by work centers dealing with work orders".
Observations usually made:
> Company underestimation of time needed to properly transfer information, as well as the time to deal properly with this information (especially work orders).
> Tendency to organize the work by grouping work orders (to optimize set up time for instance) even if the optimal fabrication flow is disrupted at such point that following work centers are not supplied in due time.
> Lack of regularity and control in jobs booking.
> Lack of visual management, universal within the organization, over work orders in order to simplify the identification of production state (by the production manager or the industrial manager or the managing director), delays, who is doing what - since when - how is the job coming along - where is it ?
> Lack of visual management of the global production in progress. This information targeting workshops managers in order to help them identifying their priorities (as well as being tuned with others).