Acusaciones contra personas que ocupan altos cargos en el Estado

Rapid Priority Management (RPM) finds itself with one foot in the planning world and one foot in the execution world. As this technique becomes more developed and well understood, it will have a major impact on prioritization across the supply chain. MRP takes a master schedule or other independent demand and then explodes it through the BOMs to define a plan that meets the needs of the end requirements. Some of the assumptions behind MRP, such as, all materials will be available at time of order release, all orders are started and completed on schedule, and orders are independent of each other, are clearly not valid in the current time. When lot sizing rules are added to this mix, quickly the complexity of answering the simple question, “What do I need to do to get this customer order out the door?” becomes overwhelming.

MRP does not keep track of the end customer order. While it is possible with project manufacturing to tie a customer order directly to components, the additional transaction needed to maintain that system quickly becomes overwhelming. When it really does not matter exactly which part is going to which customer order but rather that there are sufficient parts to cover the designated customer order, then RPM can be the answer.

Figure 8.14 Top-level view of a typical RPM report. (From Systems Plus Inc., copyright 2003. With permission.)

When a customer orders more than one item on an order, trying to determine the limiting factor to completing the order can be a nightmare for the planner. The planner must explode the order to its components and then compare that to the progress of the manufacturing work orders to determine which orders that will affect that customer order may be late. If everything works exactly to schedule, due dates are never missed, and customers never try to expedite their order, then this would not be a problem. For the rest

of the real manufacturing world, being able to answer the question of what materials and orders will gate that customer’s shipment can be close to impossible to answer.

RPM has both a production and purchasing view. Figure 8.14 shows the top level view of a typical RPM report.

Figure 8.14 is a report based on customer order 48438. At a quick glance, one can see the level 1 items and the orders that they are being produced against. The column far to the right is the most helpful to understand how many parts are really needed, not necessarily how many have started through the process. Knowing the quantity of parts that are necessary to finish the customer order is critical when prioritizing the shop.

Figure 8.15 shows the manufacturing view of the requirements to complete the customer order. The asterisks on the right bring attention to those items that must be prioritized to meet customer shipments. Unlike a standard dispatch list that drives manufacturing to build to the schedule, RPM connects the shop floor priority directly to customer requirements, helping the manufacturer become demand driven.

Figure 8.16 is an example of a purchasing report. For the first item, 112542, even though 50 parts are on order, the real customer orders require only 3 parts. This is very different from the requirements that may be necessary for the production lot sizes that are scheduled. RPM strips away all forecast and lot sizing rules and provides a clear picture to the buyer of what is really needed to get customer orders out the door. This information is invaluable when prioritizing a vendor for parts that are in short supply.

Figure 8.15 Manufacturing when/where required overview. (From Systems Plus Inc., copyright 2003. With permission.)

Figure 8.16 RPM purchasing report. (From Systems Plus Inc., copyright 2003. With permission.)

One plant manager who has already adopted RPM stated, “By focusing on the right things at the right time, production expedites and interruptions are far fewer, production flow is much smoother and productivity is significantly improved.” When asked to describe RPM, he said,

RPM provides the means for keeping the whole production organization focused on the few things that have to happen as the ship date approaches to get each order shipped on time. Components that have potential for delaying an order are identified so they can be managed. Precious limited resources are spent managing the right things at the right time rather than digging out and analyzing information. Knowing the right things to pay attention to at the right time, information provided by RPM, has allowed on time shipping to be improved by 40 percentage points in less than one month and lead time to be reduced from 3 to 4 weeks to 1 to 2 weeks on the most important products. Guessing at what and how much of the work being processed is for real customer orders versus planned orders is eliminated. This is especially important when capacity is short during the heavy portion of the business cycle.

RPM really provides the pull execution in a push planning system. RPM is not a replacement for MRP, solvers, TOC, or lean manufacturing approaches. RPM allows the production and purchasing departments to put a priority on what is really needed to answer customer demand.

SUMMARY

Material planning, capacity planning, closed loop management, and control are essential to the overall success of the company. Closing the priority-planning loop with effective capacity planning yields a powerful reality check. Capacity planning is accomplished by selecting and managing the constraints to increased production. When the bottlenecks to increased production are identified and managed, overall throughput in the plant increases. Every resource does not need to be planned and scheduled, only those impacting the throughput of the operation. Typically the implementation of a formal planning system will have the capacity planning activity come online some time after the material planning activity has been stabilized. Too many times, the implementation never gets around to bringing this valuable tool into use. To only plan materials without the consideration of capacity can also lead to failure. Not having the capacity to turn materials into desired finished goods wastes critical resources especially cash. The requirements for effective capacity planning are not complex or difficult. Similar to MRP, the most difficult part is the data input accuracy. The benefits of closed loop capacity planning far outweigh the investment. Capacity planning validates the overall priority plan and can ensure long-term utilization of the formal planning system by providing essential visibility of future problems even without an expensive APS system. When this begins to happen, the organization moves from reactive fire fighting to proactive, process-focused fire prevention.

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PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE MANAGEMENT