Executive Summary
Process maps have been developed for a specific manufacturing process in order to reduce the non-value-added steps. The overall benefit has been estimated to be around $ 9000 and a cycle time reduction of 6 to 7 days.
Introduction
A process can usually be defined as a set of actions which are performed in a systematic way to achieve a desired outcome. While most of the work like manufacturing, development, research, supply chain and many more require processes, in order to deliver the final output but most of the times these processes involve repetition of steps which may not only hamper the total amount of time required to complete the process but may also lead to an extra cost in obtaining the final outcome as desired to be achieved by the end of the process. This report will concentrate on the waste process removal of a manufacturing plant where three different processes are completed in order to achieve the final outcome and effort would be placed in order to reduce the cycle time and the costs by improving the inventory and transportation.
The Current Process
Process: Current Pressed Face Powder Production Process as shown below are the symbols that represent the process and an explanation of the process is given below the process map.
Raw Materials are received at the Minnesota facility. The raw materials are transferred to bulk storage tanks, tested for purity and toxins, and then are air flown into a tank. Wait until tank truck can ship it to Puerto Rico.
In Puerto Rico the materials is inspected at customs and at the factory and is transferred to storage tanks in Puerto Rico. Then the materials are purified, distilled, and mixed with other chemicals and colors. This mix material is transferred to storage tanks, and later transferred into containers and then shipped to Strasbourg France.
At Strasbourg France port the mix materials are inspected and transferred to trucks and when the mix materials reach Strasbourg, they are pumped into storage tanks, piped into manufacturing equipment, tested, sterilized, and compressed into compacts.
The plastic compacts and paper packaging are produced in the Czech Republic and shipped to Strasbourg. The finished product is inspected and shipped to a warehouse in Cologne Germany.
Now that, we have already seen the process map for the current process it would be important to assess the process in terms of its operations, inventory and transportation to understand if there are any non-value-added steps and the approximate improvement that can be expected after improving the process efficiency.
Reengineered Process
The first process will more or less remain the same as it does not have any major inventory however the transportation and the wait time until the truck can ship it to Puerto Rico can be avoided so now the raw Materials are received at the Minnesota facility and the raw materials are transferred to bulk storage tanks, tested for purity and toxins, and then are air flown into a tank. Since we are removing the waiting period for the trucks to transfer the purified material to Puerto Rico and the transportation time for the same is also not there, we will be able to save this time and continue with the next process at the same location. The inspection of materials at the Customs is no more required as the materials remain at the same place and hence this extra time is saved and we can start with the next step. The material is already there in the storage tanks and further purification, distillation and mixing with other chemicals and colors can take place during this step. An important improvement in the process over here is that the transfer of material from storage to handling multiple times and preparation of transportation is not required and this again saves a lot of time while we move into the final step.
In the next step, the inspection of the materials can be carried out in order to understand and review the quality and they can be transferred into different storage tanks, after which they can be piped into manufacturing equipment, tested, sterilized, and compressed into compacts. The plastic compacts and paper packaging are the steps which follow the previous one and there is no transportation between hence the finished product is inspected and shipped to a warehouse in Cologne Germany. Considering the new process, there has been a lot of improvement in terms of the time and cost savings due to the avoidance of multiple transfers between locations where different processes were taking place. Also, there are cost savings which can be determined, due to the prevention of non-value-added steps and transportation.
The Value Proposition
Now that we have already looked into the process and improvement that have taken place in order to save on the cost and cycle time, it is equally important to have an estimate of the savings after the process improvements. If we talk about the cost savings, an average transportation cost would have been around $3000, and the overall process included approximately 3 transportation steps which mean that a cost saving of $9000 can be expected after removing the steps where the material was transferred to different locations.
Similarly, if we look at the cycle time reduction during the restructure process, it will be easily noticeable that every time the transportation request is to be a cater to, and there are inspections and storage changes, a timeframe of 1 to 2 days can easily be expected and with the similar cycles 6 to 7 days is the reduction in the overall cycle time that we can expect.
Conclusion
Business process management, is an integral part of any operations management system and with the changes that we have brought to the manufacturing process discussed as above, it is quite clear that there is an approximate cost reduction of $ 9000 per cycle and at the same time that timeframe of production gets reduced by 6 to 7 days which again means that it would significantly impact the delivery time and some extra cost benefits. Hence, it can be derived that process maps are helpful in identification of steps during business cycles and reduction of non-value-added steps from the ongoing processes.
Works Cited
Amini, M. M., & Retzlaff-Roberts, D. (2001). Reverse Logistics Process Reengineering: Improving Customer Service Quality. The University of Memphis.
Heizer, J., & Render, B. (2012). Operations Management. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.
Naiqi, W. (2005). Flexibility to Manufacturing Process Reengineering for Mass Customization. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENT CONTROL AND SYSTEMS Vol.10 No. 2 , 152-161.
Qingyu Zhang, M. C. (2002). Business process reengineering for flexibility and innovation in manufacturing. Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 102 Iss: 3 , pp.146 - 152.
