Price Waterhouse Just-in-Time Model Presentation
Just-in-time Model developed by price Waterhouse is a quick analysis tool and not quantitative of a manufacturing unit on a Just-in-time perspective (JIT). This tool can be used to identify productivity improvement opportunities in the manufacturing facilities, to evaluate JIT programs and to communicate JIT concepts to the employees and suppliers. One of the models’ fundamental aspects to place the managers directly on the field as observers, can by itself originate useful ideas and provide specific guidance about where to search for possible improvement points. For this, is used the inspection, which allows the managers to go to the field and observe production process details.
Implementation Instructions:
In the inspection process, instead of a traditional round, should be planned a zigzag through the departments, making the “four systems” circuit described below.
Note: should be observed one system at a time, identifying problems and opportunities, and answering to the questions identified by each one.
- Safety and Quality Control: The percentage of the visually inspected products on the production line is inferior to 100%? The products conformity evaluation is made on each step? Is it possible that the defective pieces pass beyond the point where the defect is originated without being detected? Negative answers to these questions are not in agreement with the JIT principles and show aspects to improve as a way to improve productivity.
- Internal Transport: Should be followed the movements of the pieces and work in progress, analyzing the distances traveled and the way how the materials are transported. Should be analyzed possible changes in the manufacturing layout in order to reduce distances or eliminate expensive and/or inconvenient transport methods.
- Series Dimensions: Observe the stocks between manufacturing phases and manufacturing and assembly: in the case that the stocks between the two phases are big, should be observed the operation parameters of these phases in order to determine such reasons. The lack of synchronization between phases or processes can be detected by speaking with the employees. Another factor to analyze is the production progress time: if it’s too long, should be identified the longer phases and carefully analyzed as a way to detect the problems that originate such delay.
- Employees Activities: The employees should be individually observed in order to detect: standardization faults; inefficient pieces or of difficult access; place and type of tools used; dead time between tasks; unbalance between workloads of different employees or duties; equipment assembly time.
Translated from Portuguese by Susana Saraiva, Portuguese-English and English-Portuguese translation specialist. Contact: spams@sapo.pt.
