Transform Manufacturing to serve the customer, improving the value streams that flow
through the plant.
Lean with a purpose
A member of the Zinata Community, a former transformation leader at P&G, claims that up to 75% of waste in a plant is caused by decisions made outside of the plant. Lean needs to look further than the four walls of the plant!
An early step towards achieving world class manufacturing based on lean principles is value stream mapping, ideally starting with your customer, back to your supplier. Prioritizing improvements to the business strategy and integrating them inside the plant seamlessly across supply chain will provide the focus that delivers the most meaningful results. With the right roadmap, effective processes can be applied in the right order, completely transforming your manufacturing operation. We’ve got the expertise to make this happen – the seminal work in this area, Lean for the Process Industries was written by Peter L. King, Zinata’s Lean Leader.
Setting up the plant to succeed
An excellent example of external decisions causing low OEE are poor, constantly changing plans and schedules. Again, Peter King has written the book on it, describing how to set up a steady pattern of production, resulting in an optimum balance of efficiency, inventory and responsiveness. Planning and scheduling ensures a synchronized rhythm of flow from suppliers through the plant to customers.
Zinata’s solution to scheduling headaches are what are known as Product Wheels, which provides schedulers with a visual representation of their program and processes that allows them allocate products to their manufacturing lines on a repeatable, regular and structured sequence. Learn more about Product Wheels.
To facilitate and better expedite Product Wheels, Zinata developed Phenix Planning and Scheduling, a cloud-based tool to support all plant scheduling needs. Phenix can stand alone, as can Product Wheels, but the results when the two work simultaneously and cohesively are unparalleled. To learn more about Phenix, visit phenixps.com.
Greenfield plant projects often fail. Why?
Building a new plant costs a lot of money. This is your golden opportunity to make a step change in business performance, creating a model of your “plant of the future”. Easier said than done!
The Zinata team has unique experience in seeding transformation when a new plant needs to be built, by treating it as a People-Process-Systems-Data initiative that steps the company’s capability significantly forward towards its vision. Design the work processes, select the equipment, establish the right level of automation and data capture – all in an integrated way. Lean out the plant supply chain before it is built. Choose and train the plant team to match. Aim for a vertical startup, quickly reaching full capacity and achieving the target KPIs.
Building the capacity to change into the fabric of your operation
Let us introduce you to configurable process manufacturing. Product recipes from R&D are executed by the plant automation, enabling new products to be easily, quickly introduced, and improvements made. Process orders from ERP are likewise structured to ensure manufacturing can turn on a dime, making what is needed when it is needed.
Standard controls driven by recipes and orders provides maximum configurability. Recipe design is aligned across R&D and commercial manufacturing, ensuring efficient technology transfer. Zinata will help you design standardized, modular equipment and automation that supports the configurable plant strategy.
Throughput up, inventory down and customers satisfied
In many plants waste is everywhere, often triggered by a needless schedule change. Improving your overall equipment effectiveness is a much better option than investing in new equipment, don’t you agree? Zinata has expertise in many routes to OEE optimization including TPM, TQM, SMED, TOC, and standard processes.
Product wheels are implemented to optimize the scheduling of manufacturing in high mix environments. The wheel design creates standard production sequences and frequencies and gives the schedulers more flexibility to deal with rush orders.
While Product Wheels improve OEE, they frequently do much more: level production, reduce inventories, improve customer delivery, enhance stability and repeatability, and increase predictability.
Hey, what happened to IoT and AI?!
Everywhere you read that big data and machine learning is transforming manufacturing. How come we did not put that front and center? Simply put, it’s in the fabric of all the topics above – as an enabler and in some cases a catalyst. But it’s not an end in itself.
Zinata can help you craft your digitization strategy including in manufacturing. We have been doing this for years! More important, we’ll help you drive disruptive business value – AND architect the solution. It’s easy to get lost in the digital weeds. With our long experience in plants that are proven to use digital technology better than most, we can help you grow from where you are to a digital future.
Pain Points
The power of the schedule
We have proven that throughput, inventory, and customer response all improve when you prioritize your plans and production schedules based on the demand profile. We start with a value stream mapping exercise to uncover non-valued added efforts that burn time and build unneeded inventory. We add a SKU rationalization process so you can weed non-performing SKUs out of the schedule – with multi-functional agreement, of course. Then we turn to the Product Wheel approach to production planning.
Product Wheels establish a standard production cycle with a fixed period and an optimized product sequence and frequency for each product. When Product Wheel based scheduling strategies are paired with Zinata’s Phenix™ Planning and Scheduling managing the dynamics of real-world demand are simplified and the schedulers time is made available for more productive activities. We have plenty of knowledge to share when it comes to Product Wheels; A member of our team wrote the book on it.
One product, many plants
Zinata believes that the common recipe must define the product specification, the manufacturing steps to make it, and the raw materials used. The recipe eliminates complexity by providing one language, one way of thinking, a golden thread from concept to launch. We call it Enterprise Recipe Management.
We ensure that the exact recipe which originated in R&D is manufactured to the same specifications in every plant. We help you lay down permanent connections from upstream to downstream, and vice versa. This increases speed to market and optimizes the NPI cycle time.
The grass is greener
Every time capital is spent is an opportunity. Nowhere is this more true than when building a new plant – even when modifying an existing facility – to make a significant step towards a better future.
The starting point is to understand the core business purpose. You may require a flexible, high SKU-count plant that must turn on a dime, or cost and efficiency is key, or both. Your focus may be to dramatically cut manufacturing cycle times to enhance product supply agility and cut working capital and Cost of Goods. You may need to increase productivity 2X or 4X or translate product supply needs into hard plant capabilities.
Zinata will help you determine what needs to be built and ensure the business characteristics are met in the constructed plant, fully integrated into the new supply chain. An integrated People, Process, Plant and Information design is key. This 360 degree view is critical – we build the car around the driver, the plant around the operator.