Operational Assessment to Identify Improvement Initiatives

Challenges/Tasks

• Multiple company acquisitions had led to: unorganized production workflow and poor communication to production labor.
• Lack of performance metrics and no primary point of contact to support data analysis.
• Shortfalls in production goals and lack of KPIs prompted leadership to hire additional labor, rather than address operational failures. A highly competitive labor market combined with poor HR administrative practices led to shortfalls in hiring.
• Plant leadership lacked relevant manufacturing experience and struggled to establish a culture of continuous improvement and accountability.
• Production consisted of non-standard work, however the lack of standard routings and well-defined, visual product flow left the plat unprepared to meet customer demand.
• Each function viewed the issues differently; this coupled with conflicting leadership support, led to the inability to agree on clear priorities and starting point for corrective actions.
• Use of historical build rates coupled with the absence of accurate standard routings, led to the inability to provide meaningful production schedules. No clear understanding of the internal supplier / customer relationships.