Q: My Production is often delayed. Every time they (the ‘factory guys’) have an answer at the nth hour. They blame me for bad planning. I am just a new joiner post my MBA. How can I analyze the ‘bottlenecks’ on my own?
A: For a start your production order itself may have been scheduled to complete late. Because of reasons best known to the ‘factory’ guys. Maybe they used a scheduling algo to minimize set-up times instead of using e.g. backward scheduling with some floats to allow for ‘uncertain’ events’. They probably had a valid reason to do so. Like too many finished goods to mind because of some seasonal demand hike.
Notwithstanding, here is a structured approach to find the delays
1) In CO46 or COOIS – You can check for ‘missing’ parts needed for production. It tells you what is holding up your production order right now. COOIS will tell you the status of a Production order and even the status of an operation (if not the root cause of delay)
2) In CO03 – find operations that took longer than the provisioned time or started late (beyond scheduled or confirmed time). Document all such operations that are consistently delayed or took more time to complete. You might notice some pattern. You can then tell the production manager to change the activity times or add some dummy float operation to compensate for such delays. (you have been always late so that’s all you can do)
3) In MD04 – Find which materials (needed for production) are in short supply and why. You can’t be precise here wrt when you needed the material (hours and minutes – because not all inputs needed for production are needed right at the ‘start’ of production), but you get an idea that something is in short supply. Find the open Purchase Item and check with the Vendor where it is now. You can know the vendor from ME23N and his telephone number from MK03 on the address tab.
4) In CR03 – Check the utilization of the resource – Esp. over utilized resources. If a particular resource used in a particular op/activity is over-loaded, it implies that resource may be a bottleneck. If this is always the case, tell the production manager to create more capacity somehow. Make it available for extended hours or ask him to check the maintenance schedules esp. unplanned downtime. (often, they hide the fact that the machine is down)
5) In QA32 or QM11 – Check the status of quality inspection – on hold or rejected? Why is this taking so long. Often its a good idea to include some ‘cooling’ times like Quality inspection time in your recipe itself. Your production recipe can have multiple QM points but its not set up such.
Delays in Production can happen because of one or more reasons – Material Shortages, Capacity Shortages, Quality Holds, Insufficient times/floats in recipes, Missing Inputs and delays in receipts.
