Meaning of Tool Control Tool control in production management implies (1) determining tool requirements (2) procuring necessary tools and (3) controlling/maintaining tools once they have been procured. A tool or process planner must calculate tool requirements prior to the time of production to ensure that proper tools will be available when needed. Lost time resulting from incomplete tools planning can be expensive as well as causing work to delay. In order to facilitate tool control and to limit the investment in tool inventory, it is important to standardize wherever possible all the tools within an organisation. Need for Tool Control It is very important to ensure: Against loss through theft or negligence and production delays through misplacement or non-availability of tools. That the investment in tool inventories is minimized consistent with proper tool availability. Tool Control Procedure Two methods are commonly used to control the issue and receipt of tools Continue reading
Production Management Techniques
Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA)
Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) method was introduced by Geoffrey Boothroyd since 1960s on automatic handling. This enables the use of gathered data of previously done mistakes, speeding up the development process and accomplishing new philosophies and technologies to further ensure that the activities that are quicker and more precise in generating results can really reach this target. All aspects of design, development, manufacturability, total parts, assembly time, cost and modularity are considered in this analytical process. This process mainly focuses on enhancing the product to allow improvements in the manufacturing, quality, reliability, cost, time to market, and many other fields. Integration of discrete but highly interrelated issues of manufacturing processes and assembly occurs in DFMA. Through its use companies can make the full use of manufacturing processes that exist while minimizing the number of parts in an assembly. Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is a system that Continue reading
Continuous Manufacturing Systems
In continuous manufacturing systems the items are produced for the stocks and not for specific orders. Before planning manufacturing to stock, a sales forecast is made to estimate likely demand of the product and a master schedule is prepared to adjust the sales forecast according to past orders and level of inventory. Here the inputs are standardized and a standard set of processes and sequence of processes can be adopted. Due to this routing and scheduling for the whole process can be standardized. After setting of master production schedule, a detailed planning is carried on. Basic manufacturing information and bills of material are recorded. Information for machine load charts, equipment, personnel and material needs is tabulated. In continuous manufacturing systems each production run manufactures in large lot sizes and the production process is carried on in a definite sequence of operations in a pre-determined order. In process storage is not Continue reading
Inventory Management
What is inventory? What are its varieties? Inventory is the buffer between two related sequential activities. Between purchase and production, between the beginning and completion of production, and between production and marketing, buffers are needed. Buffer means a cushion to fall back on. Production should not suffer due to some difficulty in purchase of raw materials. Marketing should not suffer due to some difficulty in production. If the business has some stock of raw materials, a temporary difficulty in purchase will not effect production since the stock of raw materials can be used. If there is a stock of finished goods marketing will not be effected due to any temporary hurdle in production. The stocks of raw materials and finished goods, therefore serve as buffers absorbing the difficulties in purchase and production respectively. So, inventory takes different forms. Stocks of raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods are prime inventory. Stocks Continue reading
7 Important Quality Control Tools
Quality Control (QC) is a system of routine technical activities, to measure and control the quality of the inventory as it is being developed. The Quality Control system is designed to: Provide routine and consistent checks to ensure data integrity, correctness, and completeness; Identify and address errors and omissions; Document and archive inventory material and record all QC activities. Seven Quality Control Tools An organization can be made better by applying proper quality management and quality management tools and techniques. The following seven quality control tools are considered basic tools for achieving quality. Tools Techniques Checksheet Departmental purpose analysis Pareto diagram Poka-yoke Histogram Fault tree analysis Control chart Design of experiments Scatter diagram Quality function deployment Statistical process control Flowchart Failure mode and effects analysis Cause and effect diagram Benchmarking The above basic tools are classified under 2 categories “Data Acquisitions” and “Data Analysis”. Check sheet, Histogram and Control chart Continue reading
Inspection in Production Management – Concept, Objectives and Stages
Production control is introduced not merely to ensure that the goods will be produced on time, but is also meant to see that the goods produced are of the right quality. This is done through inspection of the products manufactured. Since the purpose of inspection is to compare the products with the standards of quality set earlier, it too, can be regarded as an effective agency of production control. One way of inspection is to examine the quality of finished products at the end of the process of production. But this may involve too much of wastage in the form of rejected products. To minimize the rejection of defective products, inspection may be conducted at every stage of production. Inspection can occur at three points: before production, during production, and after production. The logic of checking conformance before production is to make sure that inputs are acceptable. The logic of Continue reading