Our shop is super busy, and it feels like we are always running late on projects. I feel like if I could just get ahead of my schedule and add a couple days buffer on each job, we could work our way out of this. The problem is that we are always hurrying which leads to mistakes and re-work which then adds more time.

I feel like if I had a production manager who was really dedicated to the schedule from design, purchasing, production and installation, that might help.

Does anyone have a person like this? I worry that this might be an overhead expense that could hurt profitability.

David,

If your problem is organization a production manager will help.

If you problem is inefficient machinery that doesn't produce a quality product, call me, I can help.

I saw on your website you used to have a shop in Columbus Ohio. Curious which one? Nutek Machinery is located in Bedford, Ohio and I have done quite a bit of tech work down in Columbus.

If you are always running late, I'd say you need a better scheduler. That way you chase the problem before you start, not after.

David Smith:

For the immediate, it sounds as though you currently have more contracted work than you have production capacity to fabricate the work to meet the current deadlines. A time honored method for alleviating this condition is to subcontract out some work, if you can. This will free up a block of shop time that may solve your immediate time constraints. Perhaps working shifts would create an environment where fewer employees are not tripping over one another while rushing around, trying to "hurry up".

For the future, the current situation might serve as a reason to incorporate a measure of additional time for each project, so that the projects do not have such a tight continuous time flow, with no room for errors, reworking, undelivered materials, employee sick days, etc.

However the projects are scheduled now will probably work in the future, with the additional time allowance. A production manager, if you don’t already have one, would be an expense and would alter the chain of command in your shop. Additionally, production managers are not infallible, and I imagine that you already have enough people giving you excuses.

If you overbook your capacity, which it sounds like you have done, you will know it, as you do now, and you don’t need a production manager, a Gantt chart, or scheduling software to tell you that. If you learn the lesson of your current situation, this will happen with less frequency in the future, using your current system.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
Douglas Adams, from his novel “The Salmon of Doubt”

Good luck.
TonyF

David,

I'm new to the site and am in the dream stages of making money with a mill but do have the infamous MBA. Simple answer to your over-work issue may be to raise your prices. If you have work taking too much time and not providing workable margin, price it out. You can be nice and try to find alternatives for the clients. Focus on the highest margin jobs or find a way to separate the high-margin work and complete the low-margin work more efficiently - maybe in a different facility. You might likely find by raising prices and focusing on high-end, high-quality work, you end up with even more projects - but with the margin to afford to expand...

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

It's very possible to have less work than capacity, but still not be able get the work done- for example, if your releases to your shop are lumpy (i.e. no work this week, too much next).

Use the Theory of Constraints (reference the book "The Goal") to identify your bottleneck and keep them fed/operating at all times.

And remember from the theory- improvements at non-bottlenecks are illusory. Simplified example- you have a cutting center that can cut cabinet parts for 100 cabinets/day, a bander that can band the parts for 200 cabinets/day, and a cabinet line that can assemble 50 cabinets/day then investing in a new bander that can band 25% faster gets you nothing. Process improvements that increase throughput at the CNC get you nothing. And by nothing, I really mean stacks of parts piled up at the assembly line (and, by consequence, more of your capital tied up in them at any given moment).

Use Lean and ToC applied to your office to make the inventory of un-produced work visible- otherwise it is hard to see and do something about. Then keep that work flowing to your shop- at base all of our jobs exist to get work produced/delivered/maybe installed. Everything else is just something we do in order to be able to do that.

Jonah,

We couldn't be more synced up right now as it pertains to this topic. We are currently battling a huge reduction of our workforce due to illness. Over 1/2 of our shop floor is out, and 1/3 of our office staff. I just came from our shop floor where I had to round up the employees that are still here/healthy this week. One of our healthy employees is our CNC operator. Take look at the video I uploaded. We have cabinet parts cut and stacked for days :). I had to remind everyone that even if we were running at full strength this week, this would not be the proper way to allocate our resources. Because we are short staffed for the near future, it is even worse and the assets that we do have available need to be allocated to maximize our efficiency and REDUCE our bottlenecks. Needles to say, after our shop floor meeting our CNC operator (who by the way is an awesome co-worker) has been reassigned to a different department. The CNC machine can have the next couple of days off.

P.S. Nice to see your presence on this site, we have had some interaction over the years on the CV forum site, I appreciate your knowledge and willingness to help others.

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Wow. This post really took off. I greatly appreciate the insight. I have decided to zero in on my processes with my current team and see if I can do it without adding a new salary.

Thanks for talking me down off the ledge of spending money with our being sure I needed to.

Production manager