Master Planning and Scheduling, 4th Edition

1Chaos in Manufacturing

Don't mistake activity for accomplishment.

A TYPICAL SITUATION IN TODAY'S MANUFACTURING WORLD

• The Place: A typical world‐wide manufacturing company
• The Time: 10:00 a.m.
• The Date: Friday, the last day of the month

What had been a quiet and sporadically busy area three weeks ago has turned into a three‐ring circus. Lift trucks careen through the stockrooms at full tilt, barely avoiding head‐on collisions. Every inch of the shipping department is piled with partially completed products waiting for missing materials and components. Normally neat and orderly work areas now resemble obstacle courses as excess materials clog the aisles.

Outside the supervisor's office, an angry manager berates an expediter, demanding to know why the night shift had run the wrong size product. The expediter shifts his weight from foot to foot as he explains that the required product had been at the top of the hot list—and maybe, just maybe, the night supervisor did not get that revision of this week's list (of which there had already been three).

Over in one of the assembly areas, a worker complains that she has gone as far as she can without the next skid from the processing department. A supervisor moves from worker to worker, asking people to sign up for weekend overtime. A chart on the wall shows that 30 percent of the month's shipments still need to be made.

The cost variance reports that were the burning issue of the manufacturing meetings just two short weeks ...