The importance of the manufacturing sector to humanity cannot be underestimated; it helps in creating products and services that improve the lives of all and sundry. However, business organizations in the manufacturing industry are often confronted with some challenges such as wastages in manufacturing, defect in products, waiting times, and large inventory.
All these are the major clog in the wheel of the progress of manufacturers thereby inhibiting their productivity and effectiveness. One-piece flow process manufacturing is the ideal solution to overcoming these challenges because it makes the process of manufacturing more effective and customer-oriented.
As a manufacturing process, one-piece flow improves the quality of the products and services that are delivered to the customers by focusing on the need of the customers at the same time improves the working condition of the manufacturing environment.
Sinnaps, an online project management tool will compliment your one-piece flow manufacturing process by ensuring that you effectively manage the workload of your manufacturing operation to ensure that quality products are provided to the clients.
Also, it assists you and your team in maintaining a low level of inventory in your workshop by ensuring that the resources of your production activities are well managed; it offers a graphical illustration of how you spend your resources to derive the right value and efficiency.
Furthermore, it ensures that the right workers are assigned to each task in every step of your manufacturing process.
Índice
One-Piece Flow: Avoid Defects In Your Manufacturing Operations
One-piece flow enables manufacturers to accomplish true manufacturing in the nick of time by ensuring that the right parts are made available when they are needed in the right quantity.
It allows the parts to move through manufacturing operations from a step to another without any work-in-process in between either one piece at a time or small batch at a time. No doubt, the one-piece flow system works best when combined with a cellular layout where equipment is located within a cell in the sequence where it is used.
It is useful in overcoming a large amount of scrap when a defect is found because of large batches of work-in-process, long manufacturing lead time, poor on-time delivery and large amount work-in-process that are synonymous with the connected flow in manufacturing.
It is a flow manufacturing process that aims at optimizing the manufacturing process with the use of a minimum inventory.
With one-piece flow, you derive the following benefits:
- Improved quality and fewer defects in manufacturing exercise: it reduces the risk of defects in manufacturing as obtained in batch flow process because more inventory needs are required to be moved, counted, stored, and picked but with a one-piece flow process, the risk of defect is significantly low.
- It reduces inventory: one-piece flow process allows each operation to produce what is needed for the next step thereby eradicating unnecessary inventory build-up and delay in manufacturing.
- It requires less space for manufacturing: it uses little space as the inventory levels needed for its operations are reduced. Hence less manpower is required to manage the process.
- It promotes flexibility in manufacturing.
- It simplifies the identification of future Kaizen: This is because Kaizen encourages reduced defects and work-in-process in manufacturing and any issue in the manufacturing workshop will become visible and will be addressed immediately. Kaizen improves the effectiveness of the stakeholders that are involved in the manufacturing of products and services.
- It ensures a safer work environment: when the inventory level is low, it improves the layout of equipment of the workshop and the cell layout.
In comparing one-piece flow vs batch production, in one-piece flow, parts are always moved through operations from one step to another with no work in process in between while batch production enables manufacturers to produce more than one piece of an item and moving them forward to the next operation before they are all needed there.
Also, batch production usually drives up inventory and lead time, unlike one-piece flow. Little space is required for one-piece flow while batch production requires large space.
One-piece flow lean assists in minimizing waste within the system of manufacturing of an organization.
One-piece flow example is a software development project where software is built modularly.
In lean-scrum, one-piece flow assists the software development team in guarding against wastage in their activities to optimize their resources and improve the flow of their project.
In lean-agile, it takes into consideration the value of the customers and reduces waste in the creation of products that satisfies the needs of the customers.
How to manage and optimize resources:
Single Piece Flow: A Smart Approach To Meet The Needs Of Your Clients
Single piece flow is an effective process in manufacturing that helps in guarding manufacturers against building up a stack of inventory between the steps in their manufacturing processes. With single-piece flow, you are allowed to build at the pulse rate of customer demand.
The idea of single-piece flow is to make a piece when the customer demands thereby preventing unnecessary accumulation of inventory in the manufacturing workshop.
It places a huge premium on the interest of the clients by focusing on the ideal need of the customers in manufacturing process unlike in batch processing where a customer will have to wait for another manufacturing batch in case the current batch does not match their preference.
Single piece flow is faster, reduces waiting times, reduces inventory, detects defect faster in manufacturing and it promotes increased feedback from the customers.
No doubt, the process of minimizing wastage in your production entails having a value stream map because it offers you a flowchart that illustrates and analyzes the steps involved in manufacturing your product.
Most people are only concerned about how to value stream map. It requires having an understanding of how to walk through your process and gather the data you need. You can create a value stream map in the following steps:
- Determine the scope of your value stream map.
- Map the steps of your process
- Add inventory and waiting times
- Draw information flow
- Create a timeline
You can easily create your value stream map for your manufacturing activities with Sinnaps.
Production Process Flow: It Boosts The Efficiency Of Your Production
No doubt, a production process flow is vital in production because it enables the goals of the production to be fulfilled. It ensures the continuous movement of items through the entire production process.
For organizations that are involved in mass production, production process flow improves the efficiency and productivity of such enterprises by ensuring that they get the best out of their production lines.
It gives in details the activity-level steps that will be completed to produce the finished products from the moment the raw materials are received at the production facility.
It helps in the optimization of the manufacturing processes because you can easily identify the root causes of defects in production by analyzing the production process steps in details to diagnose the activities that could lead to defects in production.
In sprint retrospective example, the sprint team is allowed to evaluate what is working properly, what went wrong and what could be improved upon in their production activities.
Planning activities should be painstakingly carried out to achieve the desired results from the project. Sinnaps will aid you in planning the activities of your project.
