Case Study: Parts Master

Industry: Manufacturing

Background: A low volume high mix composites sub-assy area had roughly 900 different subassemblies of which 500 or so could be active at any given time. The processes to build the sub-assy’s were at various stages of process maturity and downstream processes (customers) were often delayed by late deliveries and quality issues. The team of manufacturing engineers in the area were interested in making improvements. However, between the 6 mfg engrs it was difficult to prioritize what assemblies to work on and also who was working on what.

Tool: Excel, Power Query, VBA based tool that did the following:

• connected into the Oracle CDW to tables for the MES (Planning) and MRP (SAP) systems to list all of the active (have open orders and/or have future demand for next year).
• Would let the users know if “New” parts were added to the list or parts became inactive.
• Determined a priority score for each part based on (Future Demand + 1yr) +(Quality Yield -1yr) + (Complexity) and would re-calculate priority each time the user refreshed.

Results

Two years after implementation, the Manufacturing Engineer group had completed a review and improvement project on 150 sub-assys resulting in:

• • • An average of 25% improvement in delivery
    • A direct labor savings of $2.5 Mil/yr 
    • Had improved the average quality yield by 15%