Continuous improvement: From expediting to just another job

Working for a large manufacturer early in my career, I knew a gentleman whose job was to fix problems, call to get late materials in the door, and do whatever it took for production to produce. His title was chief expediter. A company veteran, he was well-connected and had a reputation for getting things done. Got a problem? Call Harold!

To my surprise, I recently encountered another person with the expediter title. This young lady spent her days at a small manufacturer chasing parts, creating rush orders, and being the go-to person during emergencies. Got a problem with an order? Call Mary.

Whether or not the person has the formal job title, an expediter is probably hard at work in many of your plants. Why is that? Because the underlying reasons for process weakness and deficiency still exist. Until we fix the processes, emergencies will continue to happen.

How can we make disruptions few and manageable? How can we turn an emergency into just another order, no chief expediter necessary? To answer that, we need to know what causes us to go into expedite mode in the first place.

Expedites occur for a variety of reasons, and many are specific to your situation. But for simplicity purposes, let’s put them into two general categories, external and internal.

External Sources

These occur when that pesky customer or unreliable supplier disrupts the process. This sure sounds like whining, but let’s look at both ends of the value chain to see what we can do to minimize the disruptions and sources of expediting.

The customer end of the value chain has some events we can control and others we can’t. The “can control” list includes finding specification errors or ambiguity after too much of the planned lead time has been consumed; the quote process takes so long that the customer threatens to pull business; or the customer loses confidence in our ability to fulfill the order because of missed dates and promises. The “can control” list may appear to originate with the customer, but peeling away to the root cause shows that solutions lie squarely with the fabricator.

The “cannot control” list has more to do with the customer taking some action that drives a fabricator’s operation into expedite mode, such as when the customer changes an order that’s already in process. The customer has affected our comfortable business rules. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so; it is an opportunity to wow the customer. We just need to develop processes that are robust enough to handle short lead times.

A fabricator’s suppliers—be they machine shops, powder coaters, heat treaters, or anything else—can push us into expedite mode too. A supplier may deliver parts late; or those parts may be defective or leave out a recent engineering change, and so need to be replaced. Most of this may be outside our control, so our challenge is to develop procurement processes that warn us early when these events occur. Internal processes also need to be flexible enough to handle disruptions.

Internal Sources

The final inspection reveals that two pieces in a 10-piece order are defective. The order needs to ship tomorrow. Sound the alarm and create the rush orders!

The press brake is down. The fluid leak that has been creating the constant puddle for the last few weeks finally let loose. The hydraulic fitting failed, and the press brake is inoperable. And the parts need to run on this machine!

The order is lost midway through manufacturing. It was not until the order became late that it got attention. And now everyone is out looking for that order. How can it be lost?

Old prints at the machine were used to make the product. Prints based on the new revision were created but did not come with the traveler packet.

The parts were damaged. A fork truck, running into excess material stored in the traffic aisle, dropped the parts it was carrying between operations.

What are we doing to ourselves? Do we accept that “stuff happens,” or do we work to eliminate the stuff? We can eliminate or at least minimize most of these situations if we make our processes as robust as necessary.

Take Action

No one silver bullet can eliminate expediting. It takes a concerted effort to address the major weaknesses of your company’s processes, which probably are different from another company’s weaknesses.

Most of the causes of process breakdowns are within our control. Ultimately, it’s about creating robust processes. This includes implementing 5S to declutter and organize work areas. Workers no longer need to spend time looking for tools, product, or instructions. This also opens traffic aisles to eliminate the risk of damage to products when they are being moved around the plant.

We can streamline flow so that products travel in a logical and predictable path through the series of operations. This will make it easier to identify constraints. After quick observation, anyone should be able to see the constraints as they happen.

We can reduce batch sizes (the ideal batch size is one) so that people can see where products are in manufacturing. Smaller batch sizes increase the velocity of material moving through the plant and shorten the dock-to-dock time (that is, from receiving raw material to shipping finished goods).

We can use quick changeover methods to increase flexibility and free capacity. Universal fixtures allow for the next product to run on the same fixture as the last product, with minimal or no adjustments.

We can also move away from batch-and-queue. Instead, we can use workcells to create one-piece pull, making flow visible, shortening travel distances, and reducing work-in-process. This will allow us to handle drop-in and rush orders in a less disruptive way.

These are examples of the lean body of knowledge at work. Done well, they will make expediting a rarity. Thanks to short lead times and quick turnarounds, much of what was previously a recipe for chaos is now just a normal day.

A Drop-in Is Just Another Job

Let’s visit Mary, one of the expediters I referenced earlier. Before the company seriously implemented continuous improvement, Mary’s day was stressful. She dealt with one problem after another. People essentially handed off their problems—shortages, rush orders, redo work—to her. After all, she was the expediter!

Implementing lean processes created a level of calmness and confidence that was missing before. Every day seemed to be smooth and predictable, even though unplanned events still occurred.

What happens now when a customer drops in an order? Instead of a scene of questioning, a sense of defeat, and lots of grumbling, people respond methodically. In other words, it is just another job.

No longer an expediter, Mary now is a production coordinator. Forward-looking and proactive, she conducts daily, 10- to 15-minute standup production meetings with front-line supervisors. She establishes priorities for the day, identifies issues at production department levels, and shifts resources around as necessary.

What if the unexpected happens? For instance, sales takes a call from an important customer who wants to drop an order into the plant short of the agreed upon delivery date. What now?

Mary checks material availability, decides how to sequence the new order into the current load on the floor, briefs the production supervisors so they know that a new order is coming, and turns it loose. It’s just another job. No big deal. No drama. In most cases, it is business as usual since throughput times have been shortened significantly.

But what if a customer requests a lead time that’s even shorter than the shop’s new throughput time? In this case, Mary has a bit more work to do, but she still approaches it calmly and methodically—no chaos. Since the plant is running smoothly, Mary can quickly assess the work load on the affected work centers. Once she knows which operation is the greatest constraint, she can focus on taking appropriate countermeasures to bust that constraint. Maybe that means moving a couple of orders around to handle the drop-in order. Maybe it means a couple hours of overtime on the constraint operation.

Can the plant work through the constraint? If it can, Mary determines a plan for getting the drop-in order through. If not, she calculates the best date based on being aggressive, but not turning the plant upside down, and bounces it back to the customer. Mary supports this new date with data, which takes most of the emotion out of the conversation.

All of this should be done without stress, emotion, or fear of failure. Mary’s company can turn what otherwise would have been a maddening disruption into just another job—and a competitive advantage.

We are not trying to put expediters like Harold and Mary out of work. Quite the contrary. They obviously have talents and know lots about the business. The goal should be to change the work they do to be forward-looking. When we make our processes robust, the drop-in order, rush order, or other disruption becomes just another job. No drama, just results.