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Robert Gordon Australia
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What was the Challenge?
Robert Gordon Australia is a manufacturer of quality, hand decorated stoneware. In a relatively short time, the company has grown from a small cottage industry to a major manufacturer of stoneware pots.
When Nestadt Consulting first met with the company, significant pressure was being placed on production throughput in the factory, particularly in the glazing area where the pots receive their first decoration.
Customers were having to wait for up to 8 weeks or more for orders and service levels were beginning to decline. In a market constantly under threat from imports, the business needed to ensure that its service levels could compete with market demand.
The major constraint to production throughput was the factory planning, which had changed little since the company's early days. Various changes had been tried, but nothing was found that would improve efficiency while accommodating the growing product mix and volumes.
Nestadt Consulting recognised a major problem was that each order was still being treated individually. This resulted in lost, incomplete or incorrect orders. The challenge was to develop a new planning process that would:
cut delivery times and improve quality by:
increasing production throughput in the glazing area to cope with present and future order levels
reducing the incidence of lost, incomplete and incorrect orders.
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What was the Solution?
Nestadt Consulting recommended a two-pronged approach:
redesign the factory planning process to accommodate the companys requirements both now and in the future
review the accounting and order management software.
Nestadt Consulting and the Robert Gordon team mapped the existing factory planning process and held workshops with key factory operators to identify weaknesses in the current system, and determine what was needed in the new planning process.
The team also reviewed the company's existing accounting and order management software to ascertain the limits of its capability. Alternative commercial software packages were researched but were determined to be too complex for the company's needs.
The solution was to build a small planning tool using Microsoft Access. This tool was designed to take order information out of the company's existing software package and re-group like products by date and design. This meant that the production supervisor could then select the work that needed to be done based on other priorities such as the availability of staff. Work orders could then be printed for processing.
Key staff were trained in the use and maintenance of the planning tool and it was trialled and modified to suit the needs of the company before being implemented.
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What were the Results?
The results achieved through the dual approach were remarkable:
Production throughput from the glazing area increased by 50%
Lost and misplaced orders were reduced significantly
By keeping the software approach simple, the planning tool was implemented quickly and easily and can be used by staff with no prior experience
No capital cost was incurred: the planning tool was developed using existing software and hardware.
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the role of Nestadt Consulting in appropriately challenging established practices has unquestionably been the essential catalyst to exposing our potential for improvement
Geoff Goble, General Manager, Amcor Cartonboard
Nestadt Consulting are catalysts and navigators enhancing the inherent skills and knowledge in your business
Richard Lock
Manufacturing Manager, Amcor Cartonboard
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