Made-to-Order Lean

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Associating a Time with All Work

“Associating a time” does not mean that you need serious industrial engineering in your low-volume operation—after all, who has time for that? But all products need a price and are, therefore, linked to time. In other words, time is money! Any target, indicating how long something should take, is better than no target. For this to be beneficial, however, you must measure your actual time against the targeted time. The following are some benefits of associating a time with each job:

• Ability to schedule

• Productivity increase of 10 percent to 15 percent if visually comparing planned versus actual time using a day-by-hour chart (in which predetermined hourly production targets are visually tracked; see ...