by Kelsey H | Feb 21, 2022 | Industry News, Planning & Scheduling
In a global market that tends to be chaotic and ever-changing, there will come a time when every manufacturer may find it prudent to detour from the typical production plan to capitalize on an opportunity or meet the needs of the moment. Production alterations can be as simple as ramping current production up to satisfy demand, or as drastic as creating an entirely different product that consumers are desperately searching for.
During unprecedented times, this kind of manufacturing pivot can be a make-or-break moment for a company. Taking a calculated risk with production may be the difference between lost revenue and a new, profitable avenue for your business.
Pandemic Pivots
In the spring of 2020, as COVID-19 quickly spread across the country, health experts quickly publicized the increased need for a variety of protective or medical materials, such as face masks and ventilators. These products were needed so urgently that the companies who normally manufacture them would not be able to produce the devices quickly enough on their own. Within days, savvy plants in similar industries adjusted their plans to meet demand, utilizing their existing inventory of raw materials to create the health and safety products that were suddenly vital to our world.
The ability to quickly shift production isn’t limited to a certain industry or type of plant. For example, when hospitals expressed that they had a shortage of face shields, Burton Snowboards in Vermont used the snowboard materials they had on hand to design and manufacture PPE for hospitals across New England. Naturally, several clothing designers also used their skills to produce thousands of fabric face masks that helped consumers protect themselves on a daily basis. For their part, Ford dipped into its inventory of automotive materials to create more than 50,000 ventilators and 32,000 respirators, among other medical products, which hospitals still have in insufficient supply. These companies’ efforts to change their manufacturing plans made a real difference in our ability to fight the pandemic, while also guaranteeing work for its employees during an unstable economic time. Additionally, as altruistic as their intentions may have been, creating and donating these essential materials kept these businesses top of mind for consumers, who will eventually be ready to purchase snowboards, cars, and new clothes again.
Monitoring Market Fluctuations
In addition to an increasing the need for PPE, the pandemic has also caused major disruptions to the supply chain in other industries for a variety of reasons. Lifestyle changes have altered consumer behavior, restrictions have limited plants’ output, and labor shortages have led to product shortages. As a result, there has been a gap between what consumers need and what businesses have logistically been able to provide.
However, some companies have strategically worked around recent supply chain issues. In the auto industry, while other manufacturers were forced to cut production due to semiconductor chip shortages, Toyota’s production totals and sales soared because they had alternative suppliers and extra inventory already in place. As we discussed in an article last year, securing backup suppliers is vital to strengthening your supply chain and potentially even lowering material costs. Manufacturers in other industries have also altered their production schedules to offer new products that fit their audience’s changing needs or provide substitutes to items that are out of stock for an extended period. This ability to almost instantly pivot from original manufacturing plans can have a significant financial payoff. Toyota’s shift in their manufacturing plan helped them lead the auto industry in sales in 2021, ousting GM for the first time since 1931.
Become Your Own Supplier
As manufacturers tire of dealing with unpredictable delays, we’re seeing vertical integration become more common throughout the industry. Within just the last year, many businesses have acquired shipping or logistics companies and raw material manufacturers in order to regain control of their own supply chain. One of the major challenges of the volatile global supply chain, particularly for manufacturers of end products, has been not knowing about material shortages or delays until production schedules have been set and it’s too late to make drastic changes. If these companies can become vertically integrated, they can keep better tabs on the status of each step in their supply chain, giving them more time and flexibility to plan around anticipated changes in raw material availability.
If vertical integration isn’t in the cards yet for your manufacturing business, the capacity to execute a quick change to your production plan is key to weathering economic instability. Without a planning and scheduling tool, though, it can be a complicated, time-consuming, and ultimately futile process. Tools like VirtECS enable manufacturing plants to seamlessly input any proposed change to their plan and find a new, optimized production schedule in a fraction of the time it would take to accomplish manually. If you’re interested in learning more about what VirtECS can achieve for your manufacturing plant, one of our planning and scheduling experts would love to answer any questions you have.
by Kelsey H | Jan 11, 2022 | Industry News, Planning & Scheduling
The current staffing shortages and hiring challenges that many manufacturing companies are experiencing aren’t exactly new problems for the industry.
According to a report from Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, there are five million fewer people working in manufacturing in the US than there were 20 years ago. By 2030, experts project more than two million manufacturing jobs will be unfilled, four times as many openings as we have today.
If your business is struggling to find enough quality candidates to fill your plant, a logical alternative is to maximize labor and output from the valuable employees you do have. Based on our manufacturing scheduling experience, we have a few strategies to suggest.
Upgrade Equipment
If you need to rely more heavily on the reduced staff members you do have, it’s important to make sure they have the resources they need to work efficiently. As a first step, consider performing an audit of any equipment used by employees to identify machines that need to be repaired or replaced. Removing any potential roadblocks to their work will improve not only your team’s work environment, but also their performance. Making these improvements can help make up for the decreased labor and will also allow you to market enhanced working conditions to any future prospective hires.
Optimize Your Layout
In addition to upgrading equipment, your manufacturing business can also maximize existing labor by strategically updating the layout of the plant floor. For example, if employees currently have to walk a long distance to retrieve materials, or if storage space is being wasted, your plant may be missing opportunities to create a more efficient and intuitive workflow – which is something a smaller workforce will significantly benefit from. Developing an optimal plant floor may take time, but the long-lasting impact it can have on productivity and overall production output makes it a worthwhile investment.
Go to the Source
For the most pertinent information on how to provide support for your current employees, it’s best to ask them yourself. Through one-on-one interviews, focus groups, or surveys, talk to your team about their ideas and requests for resources that will make their jobs easier. Because they are the ones experiencing life at your plant every day, they often have the most valuable insight on potential improvements that you may never think of otherwise. Involving employees in planning conversations also lets them know they are a valued part of the company and gives them the satisfaction of seeing the larger impact of their efforts on your organization.
The Ideal Tool to Optimize Employee Schedules
In our experience, optimizing current employees’ schedules is a key strategy to maximize labor, though it’s extremely difficult to achieve manually. A scheduling tool, such as VirtECS®, can use existing data to allocate employees to the most optimal shifts. VirtECS® achieves these results by creating high-fidelity process models that indicate exactly where and when labor is needed. If your plant has been experiencing excessive overtime costs, this tool can account for production “hot spots” over a broad time window to spread the labor needs more evenly. VirtECS® also promotes collaboration among employees to analyze their labor usage and determine where production would benefit from more or less employee activity.
If your operation is still hoping to expand now or in the future, VirtECS® offers scenario analysis capabilities that can help HR departments target which key openings are the most important to fill first, allowing them to add the most capacity per workforce addition. This planned bootstrapping approach has become a true necessity for many industries dealing with both supply chain and labor constraints. The rapid ability of VirtECS® to respond to changing situations means that labor plans are always up to date. If you’d like to find out more about how to optimize employee schedules and hiring plans, we’d love to chat with you soon.
by Kelsey H | Dec 20, 2021 | Planning & Scheduling
As planning and scheduling software experts, we know that every manufacturer faces challenges in these areas as they try to increase plant efficiency. However, due to the intricate nature of their work, it’s a whole new ballgame for assembly manufacturers.
Assembly manufacturers typically have more individual steps and procedures that need to be coordinated throughout production. If done with basic tools like Excel, the planning and scheduling process can quickly become overwhelming and nearly impossible to optimize. In this article, we’ll discuss just a few of the unique dilemmas assembly companies face, along with an ideal solution to these challenges.
Fixed Processes
Most assembly companies rely on a rigid set of processes to turn many detailed parts into their completed product. These processes are helpful for standardization and accuracy, but they also make it more difficult to scale production up or down as needed to account for changing demands. As you likely already know, demand is in constant fluctuation for most industries today, so the ability to respond to current market conditions can be a significant competitive advantage. Without a tool that tracks the scheduling changes needed across all of production, manufacturers may end up making modifications on the fly. Though well-intentioned, this strategy often results in errors that consume time and money, outweighing some the potential benefits.
Mismanaged Resources
At many assembly plants, certain processes are manned by in-person employees. In order to do their best work and produce quality results, these employees need proper support. This often includes plenty of co-workers to help carry the load, realistic time schedules, organized materials, and other important resources. Unfortunately, few manufacturers have access to all these critical elements today, thanks to staffing shortages, supply chain delays and additional disruptions. Without an optimal supply of resources, assembly stations can quickly get backed up, leading to decreased efficiency and troublesome bottlenecks.
Costly Changeovers
Changeovers are a common problem for nearly all manufacturers, but for assembly companies with a high volume of unique individual pieces and components involved, they are especially burdensome and time-consuming if not scheduled strategically. To minimize the number of total changeovers needed, some assembly companies choose to produce more than is needed at once and store the additional inventory. However, this strategy is not always as shrewd as it seems. Overstocking inventory can be costly and requires close monitoring to avoid wasting any product. If the overstocked parts expire or become damaged, it squanders both time and resources, which may already be scarce to begin with.
The Solution for Assembly Manufacturers
With so many moving parts and pieces, it’s incredibly difficult for assembly manufacturers to manually determine how to get the most out of their current resources. These companies need a tool that will keep production moving with the most efficient solution when market demands change, the plant is understaffed, or changeovers prove to be costly. Consider an advanced planning and scheduling tool like VirtECS®, which is designed to model process scheduling issues and produce real, workable answers. Using VirtECS®, assembly manufacturers can also quickly determine the optimal flow of production, which leads to shorter changeovers, maximized resources, and less wasted time. To learn more about how VirtECS® benefits assembly companies, fill out our form and one of our experts will be in touch with you soon.
by Kelsey H | Dec 7, 2021 | Planning & Scheduling
If you’ve started developing more detailed operational plans at your manufacturing plant, you might be wondering how to continue improving upon basic modeling and simulation to thoroughly optimize production.
Many basic tools you may have at your disposal can pinpoint an efficient schedule under your current plant conditions – but what about when demands or material availabilities change? How precise are your modeling parameters? Does your current system allow for prioritization among your products? These are all important questions to ask. If the answers are disappointing, it’s time to go beyond simulation.
When we say “go beyond simulation,” we mean using a tool that tracks every detail within your plant to determine the most efficient schedule in any possible situation. With the right tool, you’ll be able to plan for changing conditions and determine exactly what the plant needs to maximize profitability.
Process Modeling
To go beyond simulation, your planning and scheduling tool must provide powerful process modeling abilities. A good process model will accurately represent your real-world system and account for any changing or unknown variables, allowing you to then run specific production scenarios in real time. Spreadsheets are a common first step toward building a process model, but once deviations or complexities pop up, many manufacturers find their cumbersome setup becomes messy and overwhelming. Advanced software, on the other hand, can model complex systems with ease while also providing a platform that is readily accessible and usable by all key stakeholders in your organization.
VirtECS® is perhaps the best example of this kind of software. VirtECS® can analyze highly detailed parameters, including yields, rates, setup times, and process vessels, which are used to create advanced plant models. These models can then be used to justify capital expenditures, reduce costs, or target process improvements. For example, one VirtECS® customer used our process models to analyze the labor levels across their plant and identify the optimal number of operators to staff at each point of production. With the help of the models, this manufacturer was able to create a balanced schedule and provide more labor where it was needed most. For more information on this case study, please download our VirtECS® Analyzer Guide.
Scenario Analysis
Tools that go beyond simulation should also equip you with extensive and specific scenario analysis. Scenario analyses will quickly explore multiple potential scenarios, evaluating which products should be given preference and the optimal production levels of both intermediate and finished products. You can also test what-if scenarios, or hypothetical changes to your process, allowing your organization to continually compare and contrast the best options for your plant.
Scenario analysis is another area in which VirtECS® excels. Manual scenario analysis is typically tedious, prone to error, and time-consuming, leading many manufacturers to test fewer variables overall. However, VirtECS® offers a process that requires minimal effort from employees while also running through more scenarios than one person would ever have time to do on their own. Once complete, the VirtECS® analysis can answer a wide range of questions, such as the best ways to prevent bottlenecks and the consequences of adding or removing pieces or equipment.
Many of our customers find VirtECS® most useful when facing uncertainty around one of their key process values. Our software can create a sample of every potential scenario, saving the results so all relevant parties in your organization can thoroughly review and make the best decision for the plant. If you’re interested in learning more about VirtECS® or setting up a demo, please fill out our form here and a VirtECS® expert will contact you soon.
by Kelsey H | Nov 9, 2021 | Planning & Scheduling
The final step in sales & operations planning is to align the supply and demand plans established in previous steps. This alignment takes many factors into account, including material supply, production capacity, and safety stock levels.
When these supply and demand plans are combined effectively, S&OP can be extremely beneficial, often resulting in reduced lead time, lower inventories, and increased profitability. Additionally, companies driven by S&OP see perfect order fulfilments increase by 17%, according to Plex Demandcaster, leading to heightened customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately, many businesses struggle to implement good S&OP practices to improve their future output. The day-to-day reality of running a plant can quickly overwhelm even the most thorough supply and demand plans. However, a planning and scheduling tool can help overcome some of these challenges and keep manufacturers on the path toward increased efficiency.
Create Consensus Decisions
With so many individuals and components involved in the manufacturing process, coming to a consensus on planning decisions is no easy task. When one or more departments are left out of the planning process, or aren’t informed of all the necessary information, it leads to a disconnect within the organization. The decision-makers may misdirect their focus or mistakenly ignore an important consideration, and the entire S&OP process suffers as a result.
Using a planning and scheduling tool like VirtECS® ensures all decisions are based on full, current plant data. VirtECS® provides accurate representations of the facility’s production capacity, combines input from each department, runs sample scenarios, and optimizes the plant schedule based on its unique constraints. With software that localizes all of this information, the path to find the most efficient plan becomes much clearer.
Aid in Effective Communication
Breakdowns in the S&OP process are often attributed to miscommunication across the organization. If one key group isn’t aware of changes made to the supply or demand plan, they can’t do their part to bring the plant up to speed. Ultimately, success in S&OP depends on effective, ongoing communication of all information across departments. In a large manufacturing plant, though, that can be easier said than done.
VirtECS® Symphony is a planning and scheduling communication tool that publishes the most current VirtECS® plant schedule to all personnel on the plant floor. VirtECS® Symphony is web-based, allowing for easy access for any employees with an Internet connection. The tool also allows for comments on each schedule, giving the entire production team a platform to discuss suggested improvements that better align with the supply and demand plans in real time.
Get Granular with Your Plans
Like many manufacturers, your organization may produce a wide range of products or face many production constraints within each plant. These circumstances can also serve as a roadblock to S&OP, making it tough to accurately plan around each limitation. With only big-picture planning tools at your disposal, implementing the supply and demand plans can feel like an insurmountable hurdle.
To support S&OP, employing a more granular planning tool is critical. VirtECS® is an ideal such tool. VirtECS® gives manufacturers the ability to prioritize each of their products and make more-informed decisions about needed trade-offs in order to drive the highest profits. The software is user-friendly, making it easy for anyone in the organization to learn to use it. Many of our current customers rave about VirtECS®’ S&OP capabilities. To find out more about how VirtECS® can benefit your organization, book a time to chat with us here.
by Kelsey H | Oct 19, 2021 | Planning & Scheduling
As we discussed in our last article, the first step in S&OP, demand planning, is accompanied by supply planning. Over the past few years, the supply planning process has become increasingly complicated, as most of the industry has experienced supply chain delays and rising raw material prices. According to the Institute of Supply Management, June 2021 saw the largest price jump for raw materials in 42 years.
Eventually, the market will recover, but these circumstances have proven the value of being flexible and finding creative ways to survive supply chain disruptions. To be successful, effective supply planning is essential across every facet of the business – after all, it’s quite difficult to sell products if you don’t have the resources to produce them at the needed rate in the first place. Keep reading to find out how to enhance your supply planning methods in your own manufacturing plant.
Consult Trusted Vendors
In a volatile time for the supply chain, one of the best ways to stay updated on breaking news is to go straight to the source and consult your raw material vendors. As experts in their specific field, they will likely be aware of all upcoming material shortages, price changes, and other developments before anyone else. By forming a strong relationship with your suppliers, you can tap into their expertise and get their perspective on the market outlook, which will give your business a leg up in preparing for disruptions.
Create Backup Plans
In addition to keeping up with supply chain issues, it’s also important to create several backup plans for a variety of possible situations to minimize any ramifications for your business. To avoid being affected by material shortages or price hikes, consider asking your supplier if they could source a slightly different products that are less susceptible to external disruptions but can still work within your production process. If that’s not a viable option, you may want to develop a list of backup vendors in different locations that you can turn to in the event of sudden delays or shortages that affect only certain areas of the US or the world. These options may allow you to avoid adjusting your total output and continue to meet consumer demand without significantly raising prices.
Know Exactly What You Need to Survive
With supply planning, the ultimate goal is to avoid being caught unaware without the materials needed to meet your demand plan. This will be especially important if you’re unable to come up with backup solutions and you’re forced to work with a limited supply of materials, like many manufacturers during the semiconductor chip shortage this year. To overcome these limitations, you must be able to determine the most effective path ahead while accounting for your plant’s capacity capabilities, as well as the minimum amount of each material required to keep production moving.
A capacity planning tool like VirtECS can be extremely beneficial in these situations. VirtECS allows you to create a virtual model of your unique plant and run sample production scenarios to determine how much of each material you need at each step of the process, and how to make the biggest impact with the resources currently available to you. Armed with this detailed information, those involved in supply planning will be able to make the most informed decisions for your organization.
If you’re interested in learning more about how VirtECS can aid in supply planning, you can download our guide here. In our final S&OP article coming soon, we’ll discuss why manufacturers struggle to implement strong S&OP practices, along with potential solutions to their biggest challenges.
