Common manufacturing sayings we should stop:
“Make more with the same, or the same with less” - senior management.
In theory the first part of this is ok but in reality the second is what management want to enforce - same production amount, lay off people. This is not a sustainable long-term view and a very limited cost reduction mindset. Always sad to hear this.
"We're about to install OEE" - management.
I get shivers ever time I hear this. The goal is now maximum utilisation of all assets. 98%+ of UK manufacturing don’t need this right now. It’s like going from crawling to sprinting. without very careful consideration OEE will add another 20 metrics to your existing 50 metric dashboard and end up greatly reducing focus, lots of fighting between all functions, maintenance and data manipulation. It can be good to have one setup on the bottleneck but 98% of UK manufacturing should just start tracking downtime here: link to downtime tracker.
“OK, but do we have demand?” - procurement/ management.
The endless self fulfilling prophecy loop. You highlight a way to greatly increase total output capacity but the question is there demand? 9/10 times your marketing strategy sucks or you GROW -> CAPITALISE -> SUSTAIN
“We need more accurate routing timings” - finance.
Yes, because tying up your process engineering team's resource for the next year and ongoing so your labour cost values are more accurate is the way forward 👍.
The topic is subjective and variation is inevitable. Reasonbaly accurate is what most companies have and fine enough. Time at the bottleneck is the only area to focus timings on in reality!
“Our new layout needs optimised material flow” - senior management.
For some reason in the last few years when considering new layouts, management are becoming fixated that material movement is optimised. They will request a spaghetti map and the topic is subjective. Of course it's important to consider these things but does it really matter if a screw travels another 5 meters once a week?
“Stock is waste, we shouldn’t hold any” - various.
Another Lean waste that gets more attention than others - stock should be seen as a tool not a waste. If it yields 1-day lead time to the customer it can be massively beneficial. It’s a tool. To remove all wastes you must shut down the company.