High-Mix Low-Volume Manufacturing Tutorial
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Course Description:

This live, interactive course will provide a fast-paced, comprehensive, detailed, and advanced educational focus on the practical application of strategic and tactical high-mix, low-volume manufacturing methods and techniques that are defining 21st century manufacturing. This course brings you advanced manufacturing education that eliminates uncertainty and risk and offers a system for sound, logical manufacturing decision making.

Discriminating customers are demanding more choices, requiring greater customization and inciting today's worldwide trend toward high-mix manufacturing. Those who fail to respond forcefully to this competitive reality will cease to exist. We'll compare and contrast fundamental differences between high-mix and repetitive manufacturing environments-focusing on planning and control.

Many techniques, tools and methods are used in high-mix manufacturing environments today-some successful, others disastrous. We'll show you how to choose an appropriate high-mix manufacturing strategy along with the sound tactical thinking required to affect improvements that will confer competitive advantage in cost, quality, delivery, responsiveness, technology and service.

Effective strategic manufacturing planning is critical to attaining excellence in customer order service. By coupling the business plan and sales forecast with the master production schedule, a manufacturer can attain a differentiating competitive advantage. Sound strategic manufacturing planning will ensure that the value delivery chain is in alignment with the overall goals of the company established at the highest level of a manufacturing organization.

An innovative approach to strategic manufacturing planning will be presented. This approach can ensure the achievement of all customer value propositions and align a manufacturing organization with its business objectives. We will demonstrate how Multiple Constraint Synchronization (MCS™) provides the critical linkage between strategic planning and tactical planning. Additionally, the 21st century Holonic manufacturing paradigm will be presented.

You Will Learn How To…

• Recognize the key differences between repetitive and high-mix manufacturing and their impact on complexity and flexibility
• Differentiate the various production system types in light of their contribution to success in high-mix manufacturing and test, such as: Just-In-Time, Group Technology, Theory of Constraints and Enterprise/Manufacturing Resource Planning
• Choose proper forecasting and capacity planning models appropriate for high-mix manufacturing environments
• Put to work the new high-mix manufacturing paradigm-MCS™ (Multiple Constraint Synchronization)-within the framework of a holonic planning model
• Create appropriate change strategies from the choices of innovation, continuous improvement, restructuring, reengineering and reinventing.
• Uncover constraints and bottlenecks
• Identify the effect variability has on global system performance
• Define and measure responsiveness and delivery performances
• Control variability at the master planning level to increase capacity, improve responsiveness and delivery performances
• Recognize and affect change based on global system thinking vs. local optima
• Make scheduling decisions effecting global system performance measurements and achieve key value propositions
• Win against your high-mix competitors.
• Understand basic rules for implementing product-specific Kanban for WIP inventory control and batch processing operations
• Recognize the differences between cycle time and processing time as well as how to measure them
• Effectively control solitary constraint operations and multiple moving constraint operations
• Control WIP in high-mix operations using generic Kanban
• Quantify and control the effect disruptions have on global system performance
• Analyze relationships among cycle time, work-in-process, throughput, and productivity as well as how to measure them
• Compare differences between stochastic and non-stochastic forecasting technique and how simulation-based forecasting can effect improvements in customer service and inventory turnover
• Distinguish the makeup of a holonic planning architecture

Who Should Attend This course offers a solid primer for management seeking fundamental insights into high-mix manufacturing. It is designed especially for the management team who must lead a change in thinking as you align your high-mix strategy. The High-Mix, Low-Volume Manufacturing Tutorial clarifies the vision you must impart to facilitate the all-important buy-in from staff throughout your organization.
Participants: The Tutorial requires a minimum of 10 participants.
Duration: This course consists of a full day of interactive Socratic method-from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Tuition: $950 per person, including materials.
Tutorials are private sessions and are tailored to fit your organization's needs.