All I Need to Know About Manufacturing I Learned in Joe's Garage

All I Need To Know About Manufacturing I Learned In Joe’s Garage

By William B. Miller, Vicki L. Schenk

Report

1. The workers were issued envelopes containing Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering drawings.

a) Ralph observed certain inconsistencies between the two sets of drawings.

b) The two departments that were responsible for producing the drawings do not communicate with each other. The Engineering department does not design for manufacturing. It seems that efficiency and costs are not considered in the design phase.

2) By buying lumber cut to length he would have cut production time, waste, labor and costs related with tooling. Less space would have been required. It is also likely that the quality of the material would have been better as a lumber yard uses better tools than a skill saw.

a) Joe applies a rigid method without thinking ahead and works with concepts that do not apply to what he is doing because he does not know otherwise. Bulk is always cheaper does not work in his case.

b) In this theoretical case, it is possible to save money because he does not pay extra labor other than the rented cop and he uses his own tools. If he would have had to pay labor and buy extra tools, the real cost of using bulk lumber would have been higher.

2. Ralph suggested that less people could have done the same job faster. Instead of many teams waiting one after the other and wasting time by moving the material around, one team could work in the garage, with the lumber pile nearby, making one section at a time. Ralph’s layout is superior for a couple of reasons. The materials required and the place were the final product is needed are close, so work in progress is not moved around. The process can be improved fast, as the errors are detected early.

4. The planning and control of the whole process is inadequate. The size of the whole operation becomes disproportionate to its outcome. Too much energy and time is devoted to recording waste instead of reducing it. The control is focused on things that have no importance and generates more work instead of making any improvements. A worker has to go to the computer each time an operation is completed, and Joe’s son wastes his time recording mostly useless data. Screws are counted and delivered in marked bags, scrap wood is recorded, etc.

The plan is rigid and is not focused on achieving a minimum but on not exceeding a maximum deadline. The amount of work in progress is high and the planning does not factor that in. In this particular case, a mistake at the beginning, when there is little work in progress, may not have much of an impact or no impact at all because of the generous buffers. A mistake later, when the amount of work in progress is high, may delay the work more than the buffers can compensate for.

a) Ralph suggests building only one section at a time – cellular manufacturing. In this case the operation becomes so small that the planning and control system designed by Joe becomes redundant.

b) The amount of work in progress is minimized. Fewer tools are needed. The parts do not have to travel between the work stations. The control systems becomes redundant, everything takes place in the garage.

5. Joe does not have an incentive system. The workers are bullied and rushed to do the work with no reward if they finish in time. Promises (a beer at the end) are not kept.

a) He relies on a computer for performance evaluation. It is easy to get first-hand information, as the shelves production takes place in his own backyard, but instead he uses a system that he does not understand.

6. The fact that Joe had a lots of tools did not help because he had to much work in progress which required all the tools with no spares left for certain