Honeywell and the Seven Deadly Wastes

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JULY 6, 2013

honeywellManagers at the 1,000 worker Honeywell factory in St. Charles, Illinois wear credit-card-size badges warning colleagues of the “seven deadly wastes,” reports The Wall Street Journal (June 30, 2013). The list of costly problems to avoid is a reminder of past problems at the plant, which makes smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors. The plant pumps out 4 million devices a year, and its efficiency gains in recent years have been achieved with a workforce that has been cut in half—illustrating the shop-floor improvements that academics have dubbed a U.S. manufacturing renaissance.

The St. Charles facility had often produced too much, anticipating demand that didn’t materialize. Overproduction and excess inventory are 2 of the 7 deadly wastes. “You couldn’t see the plant floor because there was so much inventory stacked up,” says the director of manufacturing.

Honeywell bet that St. Charles and its other US plants could be transformed into more efficient operations when other U.S. companies were fleeing for low-cost locations overseas. St. Charles assembly lines were replaced with 7 production cells where teams could build different detectors simultaneously. More of the production systems were automated to detect worker errors. The overhaul also solicited ideas for improvement from employees, a reason for maintaining the U.S. workforce. “We’re paying for people’s brains and their hands. If I just wanted hands, I could find them cheaper elsewhere,” says one exec.

St. Charles’ defect rate has fallen 80% under the improvement plan. Automation allowed one worker from each of the work cells to be reassigned. The plant now can start production of any product in the catalog within 3 minutes. Orders typically are filled within 4 days, down from 10 days. Meanwhile, the time needed to develop new detectors has shrunk to about 18 months from 3 years, as the company uses its newfound efficiency to match products from rivals.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Still Made in America

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JUNE 30, 2013

paintbrushesChinese manufacturers long ago wreaked havoc on the U.S. textile, apparel, toy and electronics industries. But disruption has come more slowly to the brush business, writes The New York Times (June 18, 2013).  There are simply so many types of brushes for so many applications that many Chinese manufacturers thought the business wasn’t worth the hassle. Despite the recession, there are still more than 200 brush, broom and mop makers in the U.S. These companies have employed two strategies to stave off Chinese competition: 1) change everything all the time, or 2) don’t ever change a thing.

Kirschner Brushes hasn’t changed a thing. The Bronx, NY company makes brushes the very same way, employing many of the same machines it bought 50 years ago. Kirschner sticks with the old ways because, unlike with toys and T-shirts, a big chunk of the brush business caters to professionals who aren’t merely shopping for price but rather for quality.

At the other end of the business is Braun Brush, which is constantly creating innovative brushes so that it never has any competition. Bruan makes a beaver-hair brush that’s solely for putting a sheen on chocolate, an industrial croissant-buttering brush, a heat-resistant brush that can clean hot deep fryers, and a tiny brush that helped Mars rovers dust debris from drilling sites. When Braun sees other firms making one of it brushes, it often drops the product rather than enter a price war. Braun has grown at 15-20% annually for the past 5 years.

Despite all the doom-and-gloom US manufacturing stories, there are still more than 200,000 small factories, like Kirschner’s and Braun’s, that provide a solid, if rarely heralded, base line of American business. Very quickly though, the US is becoming a nation of Brauns–one in which a product faces extinction, or a rebooting, shortly after it is unveiled. This flexible economy has many advantages–and over time, it delivers more economic growth to the US.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Cockpits Go Paperless

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JUNE 29, 2013

United pilots use iPads in the cockpit

United pilots use iPads in the cockpit

Airline pilots, who fly some of the world’s most technologically advanced machines, have long relied on paper navigation charts and manuals, which clutter the cockpit and have to be lugged around in cases that can weigh as much as a small child. Now, however, airlines are catching up with the tablet era, reports The Wall Street Journal (June 27, 2013).

JetBlue Airways just received FAA clearance to provide its 2,500 pilots with Apple iPads that will store digital copies of the heavy paper manuals they refer to during flights. American Airlines said its 8,000 pilots had largely gone paperless now that the carrier has completed the rollout of its own iPad program. By storing manuals and navigation charts on iPads, American figures it has eliminated 3,000 pages of paper per pilot. In April, United started requiring its 10,000 pilots to carry iPads. Southwest started an iPad trial with 150 pilots this month and expects to expand it to an additional 550 pilots in the third quarter.

The volume of paper traditionally required by cockpit crews is almost overwhelming in the confines of a cockpit. American estimates that removing the bags from all its planes saves about 400,000 gallons of fuel annually, worth $1.2 million at current prices. One Alaska Airlines pilot said having the approach plates, arrival charts and runway diagrams available at the touch of a tablet is a lot quicker and more user-friendly. “It’s about information management, the human factors of managing charts,” he said. The change helps pilots be “safe and compliant” and helps the airline run a “better business.”

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.