2. Basics production process

Work and process planning is nothing more than the design, documentation, control, and improvement of a production process, i.e., the extent to which personnel, material, operating resources and our plant can be used as productively as possible to achieve the corporate goal. To meet delivery deadlines or minimize throughput times, for example, there are various process planning strategies and methods.

It is important to plan each process according to four criteria:

• With uniformity (i.e., processes that are as standardized or proven as possible), you create reliability, traceability, and reproducibility in the company.
• The correct sequence of elements in the process is essential to avoid downtime and time losses along the production line.
• An adequate definition of the goals of a process is important, not only division-specific but also cross-divisional.
• With cross-divisional thinking, you achieve a coherent system with fewer interfaces and correspondingly less coordination effort.

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The pillars of any process are the employees. It is therefore essential that they are understood as part of the process of planning. Clear and transparent communication is important here, not only about tasks and areas of responsibility but also about goals and key figures.

The better the staff understands the background of process planning (and the changes it entails), the more likely they are to accept it. Discussing processes with staff is also a good way to increase motivation (staff feel involved) and identify possible weaknesses in the plan that have not yet been considered.

Let us now take a closer look at two of the most important planning strategies or methods. First, a planning strategy is the principles and procedures for effective planning of order processing in the company.

Over time, of course, many more planning strategies have developed, most of which follow the principle of uniformity – this means that depending on the field of application or the problem, there is probably already a suitable planning strategy – practically!

Here are some examples of terms for orientation: process or sequence planning, process-oriented work planning, bottleneck planning, just-in-time, just-in-sequence, kanban, load-oriented order release, zero-defect production, group organization, out-/insourcing etc.

Let’s take process and sequence planning as a first example. This is used to optimize the operational sequence of orders (i.e. the order in which orders are processed). Depending on the priority target value (for example, efficient use of resources versus adherence to schedules), orders are ranked according to the following rules:

• Earliest Due Date: The job with the least remaining processing time is processed first.
• Highest Value: The order with the highest added value is processed first.
• First-Come, First-Serve rule: The order received first is processed first (also referred to as the first-come-first-serve principle).
• Shortest Processing Time: The order with the shortest order processing time is processed first.

Meeting the standards set by the group was the main motivation for the company manufacturing compressors and anti-lock-braking systems. It was highlighted that the information required during the production process in the manufacturing facility changes very quickly. A system of communicating and sharing information with other than the experienced staff was required in the facility. If an employee is unsure about the quality of the component, he/she leaves it in a special area with a yellow card attached to signal for an engineer to inspect that component. For operations dealing with large variations in products, such as this company, it was identified that a cross-functional workforce was critical to balancing capacity with highly variable processing times. To increase flexibility, the company has implemented a skills matrix that includes all operations of the process and the list of operators who can perform them. This helps management to identify the right employees for the right tasks. Hourly production boards were introduced to provide production results compared to the plan. This creates a feedback system for estimated processes that allows problems to be identified in real-time and better utilizes capacities. It is easier now to identify where the components should go from one operation to another, and the distance travelled by each product was reduced.

Another planning strategy is Just-in-Time (JIT). This concerns the planning of deliveries. With JIT, these should take place as precisely as possible when the delivered resources are processed further. This has two main consequences:

• On the one hand, this planning strategy avoids storage costs and control efforts.
• On the other hand, however, one is highly dependent on the reliability of suppliers.

JIT has become more common in highly standardized industrial companies, such as the automotive industry. In some cases, companies supplying certain components have set up their operations or warehouses on the premises of their customers (e.g., automotive plants).

An important aspect in work and process planning is then, of course, time; especially about the timely completion of individual elements in the production process.

In addition, there is scheduling. This also has its strategic approaches, especially in series and mass production (such as so-called “scheduling”). Effective scheduling ensures that time schedules are adhered to and that there is no downtime within the production or waiting times outside for customers.

Another time-related aspect is the lead time. This is the duration of a process (for example, how long a certain type of model takes to roll off the assembly line). Lead time consists of scheduled and additional process steps and is an important metric for evaluating process performance.

Two important terms in process planning are also numbering and coding. These ensure the exact and simple traceability of all elements in a production process. This becomes particularly essential when model and type diversity plays a role, when batch sizes in production decrease and when the demand for quantities and quality increases in equal measure – the automotive industry is the best example of this.
Numbering is the construction of classifying or identifying combinations of digits, letters or special characters that result in individual numbers.

Coding is the encoding of these numbers. A classic example is the barcode, but also colour coding or RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification). This is used to read out individual numbers more quickly and automatically.

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There are many examples of the use of a numbering system: Invoices, article numbers, assemblies, raw materials, and services, but also processes, process steps, activities or employees can be given a number in a numbering system. What is important here is uniqueness (each element of a numbering system can only have one individual number) as well as length – the shorter and the more unique a number is, the less prone to errors the numbering system is.