CAN JIT ENSURE QUALITY & QUANTITY?

Basically JIT is a programme directed towards ensuring that the right quantities are purchased or produced at the right time, and that there is no waste in terms of material or money anywhere in our supply chain. JIT fits well under the TQM umbrella, for many of the ideas and techniques are very similar and, moreover, JIT will not work without TQM in operation. It is essentially: · A series of operating concepts that allows systematic identification of operational problems. · A series of technology –based tools for correcting problems following their identification. An important outcome of JIT is a disciplined programme for improving productivity and reducing waste. This programme leads to cost-effective production or operation and delivery of only the required goods or services, in the correct quantity, at the right time and place. This is achieved with the minimum amount of resources – facilities, equipment, materials, and people. The successful operation of JIT is dependent upon a balance between the suppliers’ flexibility and the users’ stability, and of course requires total management and employee commitment and teamwork. 1 AIMS OF JIT The fundamental aims of JIT are to produce or operate to meet the requirements of the customer exactly, without waste, immediately on demand. In some manufacturing companies JIT has been introduced as ‘continuous flow production,’ which describes very well the objective of achieving conversion of purchased material or service receipt to delivery, i.e. from supplier to customer. If this extends into the supplier and customer chains, all operating with JIT, a perfectly continuous flow of material, information or service will be achieved. JIT may be used in non-manufacturing in administration areas, for example, by using external standards as reference points. The JIT concepts identify operational problems by tracking the following:

1. Material Movements – when material stops, diverts or turns backwards, these always correlate with an aberration in the ‘process.’

2. Material accumulations – these are there as a buffer for problem, excessive variability, etc., like water covering up ‘rocks’.

3. Process flexibility –an absolute necessity for flexible operation and design.

4. Value-added efforts – much of what is done does not add value and the customer will not pay for it.

THE OPERATION OF JIT

The tools to carry out the monitoring required are familiar quality and operations management methods, such as: · Flowcharting · Method study and analysis. · Preventive maintenance. · Plant layout methods. · Standardized design. · Statistical process control. · Value analysis and value engineering. But some techniques are more directly associated with the operation of JIT systems: 1. Batch or lot size reduction. 2. Flexible Workforce. 3. Kanban or cards with material visibility. 4. Mistake- proofing. 5. Pull-scheduling. 6. Set-up time reduction 7. Standardized containers. In addition, joint development programmes with suppliers and customers will be required to establish long-term relationships and develop single sourcing arrangement that provide frequent deliveries in small quantities. These can only be achieved through close communications and meaningful certified quality.

THE OPERATION OF JIT

There is clear evidence that JIT has been an important component of business success in the Far East and that it is used by Japanese companies operating in the West. Many European and American companies that have adopted JIT have made spectacular improvement in performance. These include: · Increased flexibility (particularly of the workforce). · Reduction in stock and work-in-progress, and the space it occupies. · Simplification of products and processes. These programmes are always characterized by a real commitment to continuous improvement. Organizations have been rewarded, however, by the low cost, low risk aspects of implementation, provided a sensible attitude prevails. The golden rule is to never remove resources – such as stock –before the organization is ready and able to correct the problems that will be exposed by doing so. Reduction of the water level to reveal the rocks, so that they may be demolished, is fine, provided that we can quickly get our hands back on the stock while the problem is being corrected. Successive phases of JIT may well become self-financing by rapid simplification of systems and work flows, JIT must never be regarded at the intermediate stage as the ‘quick-fix’. Management must contemplate:

THE OPERATION OF JIT 1. Long implementation times – typically 5-7 years.

2. A total or company- wide quality and just-in-time management programme.

3. Never ending improvement and reduction of waste.

The primary objective of JIT is the improvement of quality through elimination of waste. It demands that inventory is kept minimum, for inventory costs (insurance, interest, obsolescence, etc.) can be as high as 26 per cent of stock value, and significant improvements in costs and quality can be achieved by the reduction of inventory. Defective parts, materials, and workmanship are detected promptly and quickly fed back to the producing process. Where the problems are identified and corrected on the spot. In addition to quality improvement, there is no requirement for a profusion of warehouses, fleets of forklift trucks, rows of racks, scores of employees, and piles of cash to purchase, handle, and move the inventory.

THE OPERATION OF JIT

In some engineering and process industry applications the major obstacle in producing small lots is the set-up times of equipment and machines. Long set-up time make the small lot size uneconomical so, clearly, cutting set-up times is one of the first tasks. This will also reduce equipment downtime; work-in-progress costs associated with obsolescence, materials handling and control, and quality control. Shorter set-up times also result in shorter lead times, which provides greater flexibility for processes to adapt to changes in the market demand and requirements.

THE KANBAN SYSTEM

Kanban is a Japanese word meaning visible record, but in the West it is generally taken to mean a card that signals the need to deliver or produce more parts or components. In manufacturing, various types of record cards, e.g. job orders or tickets and route cards, are used for ordering more parts in a push type, schedule-based system. In a push system a multi-period master production schedule of future demands is prepared, and a computer explodes this into detailed schedules for producing or purchasing the appropriate parts or materials. The schedules then push the production of the parts or components, out and onward. These systems, when computer-based, are usually called Material Requirements Planning (MRP) or the more recent Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII).

THE KANBAN SYSTEM

The main feature of the Kanban system is that it pulls parts and components through the production processes when they are needed. Each material, component, or part has its own special container designed to hold a precise, preferably small, quantity. The number of containers for each part is a carefully considered management decision. Only standard containers are used, and they are always filled with the prescribed quantity. There are two cards of Kanbans for each container. The production or P-Kanban serves the work centre producing the part, whereas the conveyance or C-Kanban serves the work centre using it. Each container travels between the two work centres and one Kandan is exchanged for another along the way. No parts may be made at any work centre may come to a halt rather than produce materials or parts not yet requested. The operators will engage in other activities, such as cleaning, maintenance, improvement or quality-circle project work when no P-Kanbans have been submitted. These hold-ups often help to identify and improve bottleneck situations. PLANNING JUST-IN-TIME (JIT) MANAGEMENT

· JIT fits well under the TQM umbrella and is essentially a series of operating concepts that allow the systematic identification of problems, and tools for correcting them. · JIT aims to produce or operate, in accordance with customer requirements, without waste, immediately on demand. Some of the direct techniques associated with JIT are batch or lot size reduction, flexible, standardized containers. · JIT implementation requires the foundations of quality, low cost, minimum lead times, high flexibility, through the core techniques of pull scheduling, JIT purchasing, buffer stock removal, multifunction workforce and enforced improvement. · As with TQM, a steering committee, a project manager and project teams are enforced improvement. · Purchasing is an important feature of JIT. Long-term relationships with a few suppliers, or ‘co-producers’, are developed in networks of trust to provide quality goods and services.

A quality every executive must possess-DETERMINATION

In our day-to-day life as professionals we come across many obstacles.
Obstacles of different types.
Some of us encounter jealous colleagues.
Some of us have nagging bosses.
In order to succeed we need to take all such obstacles in our strides and stay on our path towards our goal. We need to focus on our goal. We need to develop a trait called “determination” to help us in our journey.
Determination makes up for the lack of many other qualities, which we do not possess. As human beings none of us are perfect.
We need to identify our core competencies and work on them, so also we need to target our weaknesses and work hard to reduce their negativity on our approach if not eliminate them out totally.
Reading this article is very easy as all you need to do is to briskly run through the words that I have put down. Remember it took me a long time to pen this article for you. I spent a long time on my couch going through the notes I made over a period of time. I woke up at 5.10 am for the past three days in order to find a logical way of putting down my thoughts for you to read and all through my journey from the time the idea germinated in my mind to the actual execution it was “determination” that guided me the way through the pathways of work to the end.
The golden rule is “never give up” once you have made up your mind.
Going from one level to another causes pain.
Pain is both physical and physcological.
We need to be cautious as going from one level to another costs something and we need to bear that little something.
It is said that there is no gain without pain.
The difference between success and failure is wafer thin and it is the right proportion of “determination” to succeed that distinguishes between the winners and losers.
Winners don’t like to do stuff so also losers don’t like to do stuff.
But winners just do stuff and get on with life in spite of their personal dislike.
This is the difference and it is determination that drives this spirit.
Winners put in more than 100% always and thus succeed.
It is my opinion that there is no second or third best. It is either you have got the top rung or you have lost. In our formative years our involvement in sports and competitive extracurricular activities sets the pace for determination.
More the involvement the more is the chance that we would bring in the competitive nature with us in whatever we do.
Just the other day while shopping at a mall I heard a child yelling out at her parents. I was astonished at what she said to her parents. She said either you love me or you don’t, if you love me then you surely will buy me this doll. The doll was an expensive one and it really must not have been affordable for the parents. That’s a different story all together. We need to really understand is that the child was determined to get the doll and she decided to give her best shot by using the strong tool called “love”. Morally I don’t vouch for the child’s behavior but aren’t we all children? At times it is really confusing as to what we call determination.
To have determination we need to have a strong mind and to have a strong mind we need to have a healthy body. We all know that body follows the mind. Hence mind is the temple of determination. The thought of determination by itself is inert if it is not backed up by strong levels of energy generated by our “prana” which is the link between our body and mind.
Don’t we at some time in our life visit a close relative or a friend or an acquaintance and be awe struck by their huge mansion with expensive rugs, artistic paintings of snob value, modern furniture, modular kitchen. When we closely look at most of these homes we find that the items by themselves are really very exquisite in taste but as a whole there seems that some of the items are out of place and the house now looks unorganized.
In comparison some other homes we visit are simple in their furniture and are really pleasing to look at, as there is an element of symmetry and simplicity about them. Our minds too are such. We need to arrange our thoughts such that they are logical and can be worked upon. If there is a clutter of thoughts, ideologies and theories then we will not be able to deliver even though we are determined to achieve our goals.
To complete this article on determination one last area we need to work on in “getting into the zone”. “Zone” is the state of mind where we are in a different plane all together. To explain the concept of “zone” let us consider an inform cricket batsman. An inform cricket batsman who has set into the game will see the ball as big as a football. His eye too has set in and he will drive, pull, sweep, square cut with elegance. He is totally focused on amassing runs for himself and his team. We often see on the television during live coverage that the batsman at the non-striker’s end walks up to the batsman and mutters something for which the usual response is a nod of the head. Do you really think that the batsman is aware of what is said to him? If your response is yes then you are sadly mistaken. The batsman has conditioned himself to receiving praises and what ever the non- striker says falls on his deaf ears and he continues his game in a determined fashion to accumulate runs.

COMPETITIVE MANUFACTURING METRICS.

Senior management too often chooses to concentrate its efforts in other areas, leaving manufacturing partially or totally unintegrated. Too many corporate myopias and parochial views place manufacturers in a less than desirable competitive position.
The competitive challenge necessitates a new corporate attitude about the increased importance of World Class Manufacturing. This will cause senior management to view manufacturing with renewed importance as part of an integrated corporate strategy.
This renewed importance for manufacturing will require a better understanding of manufacturing strategy implications, tradeoffs, and manufacturing planning, execution, and control techniques to gain and maintain competitive advantage. We must also recognize that MRP, JIT, etc. by themselves are only a piece of the whole. A new perspective is needed. The old, and unfortunately some new, parochial views have caused many of us to be nearsighted and lose ground because of it. We have learned a hard lesson.
One of our greatest areas of vulnerability was in taking for granted that we knew how to apply our own manufacturing techniques, and we were so good at manufacturing that no one could beat us at our own game.
What must be understood by senior management is that planning, organizing, executing and controlling manufac­turing resources is one of the key cornerstones to a profitable and dominant competitive position. In order to gain competitive superiority in a world economy, the development and implementation of an effective manufacturing strategy has become an essential, overriding mission for manu­facturers.
Developing a highly competitive manufacturing strat­egy, as an integral part of an overall corporate strategy is a vital part of the management process as a company develops its instincts for Manufacturing Excellence.
Are You on THE RIGHT Track? You may be on the right track but please ensure that you don’t sit down on the track as you may be run over and end up not knowing what hit you.
Is your company firmly committed and involved with making Manufacturing Excellence an integral part of the management process?
After serious consideration, candid answers to the following 10 questions will help you benchmark how your organization is progressing toward the goal of Manufacturing Excellence. The scoring system is 10 points for yes and zero points for no answers. Nothing less than 100 points or 100% performance is really acceptable if Manufacturing Excellence is an integral part of your company's strategy for competitive advantage.
1) Do we have a formal, top management driven Sales and Operations Planning process for determining the capacity requirements, financial resources, cycle times, etc. to support anticipated customer demand?
2) Do we thoroughly understand that excess inventory masks operational and quality problems, making it difficult to identify the specific cause for correction?
3) Do we know the expected reduction in work-in-process and finished goods inventories from shorter cycle times?
4) Have we developed the mindset to constantly identify problems and immediately resolve them?
5) Are we working aggressively on the redesign of complicated products, which are difficult to manufacture because they have been over designed.
6) Does senior management thoroughly understands that they decide how important quality is and improvement begins from that point?
7) Have we calculated the production capacity increase from a 75% or more reduction in current changeover times?
8) Have we significantly reduced alternate sources of supply and made our primary vendors working partners?
9) Do our performance measurements stimulate improvement in the right direction?
10) Do we have a well conceived, documented action plan that has the organization focused on and aggressively working on the right issues?

STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

Strategic planning is a business process that many companies employ to identify critical success factors that set the course for future growth and profits.
Lewis Carroll in "Alice in Wonderland" makes a good case for it: "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" said Alice. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where…," said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
Like most business processes, the key to success is the effective implementation of the plan. Companies that do a good job of developing and executing their strategies can create a competitive edge that provides increased market share and higher gross profit margins. Organizations that turn their plan into a "dust collector" upon an executive bookshelf, will never achieve their full growth and profit potential. Strategic plan knowledge for anyone ... anywhere ... anytime.
Most criticism of strategic planning is aimed at the planning process. They question the validity of a plan that has been based on market "guestimates", the questionable valuation of the depth and breadth of competitors and an optimistic assessment of the company's internal strength and weakness. The fact that strategic plans can be overly optimistic is not the core problem. Although the criticism may be appropriate, it puts the focus for improvement on the wrong end of the process - it is the implementation task that is critical to producing positive results and it is here where most companies fail at strategic planning.
Poorly implemented rational, strategic plans will produce limited positive results. On the other hand, overly optimistic strategic plans, effectively implemented, can produce results beyond everyone's expectations. This being the case, what is the key to effective implementation? In one word - commitment! Companies that are good at strategic planning build commitment to the planning process and to each of the strategies within the plan. They build commitment throughout the organization, working with people from all business functions to build commitment before, during and after development of their strategic plan.
Strategic plan knowledge for anyone ... anywhere ... anytime.
Winners begin early in building a commitment to the strategic plan. Suggestions are encouraged from managers at all levels, from key executives who will participate in the planning sessions, and others who will share responsibility for implementing the resultant strategies. Together, they surface issues that will require changes in business process and/or culture and identify those constraints that will need to be overcome if implementation is to be successful During planning sessions, key executives from each functional area are all encouraged to participate and contribute to the plan. These executives develop strategies that build on organizational strengths and consider resources required to accomplish those strategies. They assure that a key executive "owns" each strategy and commits to a time schedule for its accomplishment. The key executives give thought to resource planning - realizing that human resources are the key to making positive things happen in difficult, complex business environments - and they commit accordingly. Following the development of their plan, those responsible for implementations develop their own "tactical plans."
These action plans, when coupled with self-directed work teams, are major contributors to a successful Strategic Planning implementation. Teams use their plan to manage, to make decisions and to grow their business. Periodically, they review their "tactical plans" to monitor and report on the progress of implementation - keeping the plan "alive" by revising strategies and tactics when necessary. Strategic plan knowledge for anyone ... anywhere ... anytime. Finally, to insure successful implementation of their strategic plan, they work on the planning process itself. The planning group continuously "fine tunes" the planning process to insure that inputs from all business functions are given their due consideration and to insure that buy-in and commitment to the final plan is agreed upon throughout all levels of the organization. So, why are most operations management teams outside of the strategic planning process? Why do many line managers view strategic planning as a make work project that produces little or zero value to customers? Maybe, it's because they did not participate in its development nor did they buy-into its validity - let alone commit to the execution of its strategic objectives. In short, they're not connected to the process! To achieve a company's full growth and profit potential, CEOs and business owners need to insure the active participation of operation management in the strategic planning process.

LIFE IN A MANUFACTURING ORGANISATION-AFTER A FRUSTATING DAY ON THE SHOPFLOOR

Life is not always a cake walk.
Not always easy not always comfortable and sometimes real hard.
Things dont always happen as we like.
People dont always treat us as we would have liked(not that we treat people the way we would expected to be treated).
Stuff does not happen as we wish. we slog in and slog out and work real hard but get very few results. Grass seems greener on the other side. It is at these times that we ought to pull ourselves togeather and put on our otherwise dormant thinking cap and get down to some serious reflecting time.
We need to succeed and for this we must try...........&try and try again.
We must believe in what we do and must not give up our conviction.
We must keep pushing, we must be patient. problems ,difficulties ,catch 22 situations give us a chance to be stronger,better and tougher. We overcome our obstacles we we learn new things.
We acquire new knowledge ,skills and new abilities .
We grow in experience. We make the world around us a better place to live in.
So join me in making this world a better place to llive in. work hard -party hard and leave a bit to luck and the rest to the supreme being.

TWO CHOICES & MY DRIVE

I awoke with a start this morn at 5.10am as there was a big commotion due to a fight between two packs of dogs.Nothing could motivate me to get out of bed and drag myself to another day of rituals at the office.i somehow got up and went to my pc and switched on the suround sound so that i could wake up the neighbour hood too. "what a devilish ploy " ithought to myself to get even with neighbours who occupy my parking spot each time and everytime.i choose to play "lady in red " and backed that up with " smoke on the waters" followed bygreatest hits of eagles.Refreshed i sat at my study table to complete the article i was penning " delegation -an art".well i would not mind awaking up every morning with a start if it will help me complete 23 articles that i am penning and yearing to find an end.Well i thought to myself as was sipping some hot coffee from the mug (my wife had sort of emphatically thuded on the table some moments back),what is it that has driven me to complete the article?was it the early morning awakening ? was it the music? was it ?..........well as i swung my chair it occured to me ...to start a day on a no note basis is rather plain.as i had two choices either to go get it or laze.i chose the prior and am happy about it.

moral: failures happen because we dont try to do things.success occurs because we have an urge not to do things but we overcome this feeling and just do it.so positive attitude backed with postive actions will yeild positive results.

success revisited

Success breeds success. Nothing is as sweet as success. It is the journey through pain, agony, hard work, planning, strategy and bits of luck that cultivates what is known as success. The difference between success and failure is wafer thin. The greatest success principle I have come across is “learn from the experts”. Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you want to succeed find out what other successful people are doing and do the same things until you commence to reap similar results. Most successful people have on comman trait i.e. they are “very well organized” and in order to be so they use their time very well. They are highly productive and get more work done than average people for a similar period of time. These successful people are high performers with qualities to be both capable and efficient. They do things right in the right way at the right time with the right approach having the right attitude and aptitude. As a result their contributions in the spheres of work are far more than an average individuals . another trait in 75% of successful persons is that they possess some maverical traits. it is this trait that drives them to compete with themselves first and then others. they drive themselves to unimaginable limits and thus give a better prioductivity than average persons working in that sphere of work. succesful people also have their share of badluck but when they are unsuccesful they dont lose sight of the moral and gear up to encounter the nadir with a strong determination to move up the performance curve and feel the zenith .

ATTITUDINAL ISSUES IN SOME EMERGING ORGANISATIONS.

walk the talk :
practice what you preach:
show the way:
let actions speak louder than words
are something that many managers opt to forget or let go in the context of delivering qualitative & quantitative results.
It is not because they are not capable or they are not skilled enough to do so. The reason is they feel it is not their job and this is the job of another manager in the organisation. They feel that their job is to highlight the problem, record it, make paper reports save it in different colourful formats and just do nothing apart from saving these reports on the hard disk in the virtual world.
Is this comman situation in your organisation???????
Welcome to the world of woes.
The probable cause of this is that the senior management is happy recruting people who are not team players(they fail to recogonise this trait as crucial during selection process) and who are of less worthy than some hardworking street smart candidates. This non team players are just 9 to 5 players who always want to hold the ball and do nothing but place the ball before the goal line and expect another player to come kick the ball as they imagine thats what they are paid for.
The word " excellence" " camaraderie" " organisational goals,objectives" mean nothing or very little to these managers and yet during appraisals they score higher than their collegues in functions who have been delivering results. surprised?????
Welcome to the corporate world where all people are equal but some people are more equal than others.
Some time back i met an improvement consultant who has really been a bright patch in every organisation that he's been working with and he had a lot to say about these type of managers.
He was of the opinion that every manager has two roles to play. One is a departmental role and the other is towards his organisation and both these roles should produce results that are unidirectional. IF A MANAGER FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THIS DUAL responsibility then it is the responsibility of the immediate superior to make the erring manager correct the attitude.
It is usually observed that the superior is so busy with his personal agenda that he does nothing to correct this and the situation swings from bad to worse affecting the performance of performing managers and thus organisation looses out on performance as the speed and agility is hindered and the well oiled machine develops snags and chutters as it moves along.
It is essential for senior managers who are into strategic decision making to once in a while reveiw tactical areas especially one of human resource development as even in today's corporate world we do have mangers who would not show the way to the younger managers due to the following reasons:

1) They are busy with their personal agendas.

2)They dont just care.

3) They are on the brink of retirement

4) They are seeking out new oppurtunities of employment in some other organisation.

5) They dont know how to handle such situations.

6) They get sadistic pleasure as these performances affect some other manager and not them.

7) They are not ACCOUNTABLE

8) AN ELEMENT OF LOYALTY TO THE ORGANISATION IS MISSING AND THEIR SUPERIORS ARE MISLED.

9) These managers are not capable and they are in the position not on merit but have been promoted due to seniority.

and the list can go on.....

But this exists in many growing organisations.

Can we have a awakening in the senior management and reduce the ill effects of such attitudes on the progress of the organisations?