TOCICO

This presentation shares some insights about managing work orders in a manufacturing plant in which the touch time is a relatively high percentage from the production lead time for both make to order (MTO) and make to stock (MTS) environments. A theoretical description and a case study is provided. There has always been a grey area between when to use the production solution versus the project management solution. There seems to be a grey area where neither solution works really well. High touch time is defined as being greater than 20% of the lead time with the total lead time being quite long (weeks or more). Two environments are provided: a high touch time operation that is not competing on a resource (a subcontractor work, a drying operation, a chemical process, an operation dependent on client approval, etc.) and a high touch time operation that comes from using a resource that tends to work slowly (relative to the market expectation for a lead time) (a CNC long operation, a resource which requires a long processing time, a manual operation that requires a large amount of time such as assembly). Buffer penetration is used in simplified drum buffer rope. Elmwood City Forge (a job shop company) is used as an example of the approach. Negative branches were created illustrating theoretical problems of high touch time and the Elmwood City Forge validated these negative branches. Lessons learned are provided.