Industrial companies traditionally view manufacturing cost reduction as only a labor cost issue. It is not even the largest cost. Significant cost reduction is a matter of effective work processes across plants and supply chain operations for normal and abnormal operating states. The real solution for effective work processes requires simultaneous changes in organization structure, operations processes, and employee skill sets all of which are enabled by manufacturing operations management system (MOM) technologies. Many manufacturers attempt Continuous Improvement (CI) initiatives without an aligned MOM system strategy and fail. Many manufacturers attempt MOM systems without an aligned CI initiative and fail. As a result, a new global industrial revolution has begun based on how to optimize manufacturing plants by combining CI methods with an adaptive MOM system architecture put into place using a Manufacturing Transformation Strategy.
Successful optimization centers on prevention of production issues in the design by characterizing operations work processes through Lean and Six Sigma methods. Based on the resulting user and system functional requirements, a MOM System Roadmap is derived including risks and a tangible return on investment (ROI) identified for each project. However, when the MOM System Roadmap lacks cultural transformation requirements for each system, the system projects fail.
Non-value-added operations costs are caused by poor MOM system planning and governance. Isolated MOM systems, while solving specific issues, ultimately result in high operations costs due a fragmented, constrained architecture and MOM master data. The unplanned discovery /correction of system design errors increase costs throughout operations characterization and optimization activities. These additional passed-on costs from inadequate system design and governance range between 100 and 300 times more expensive than determining requirements and architecture through a manufacturing transformation assessment.
The paper details the building of a Manufacturing Transformation Strategy by combining two frameworks:
- A Manufacturing Maturity Model supporting the transformation strategy
- The ISA-95 methods mapped against this Maturity Model to support the MOM System and CI Roadmap.
Date Published: January 2011
Authors:
- Alain Plasschaert, Atos Origin
- Charlie Gifford, 21st Century Manufacturing Solutions LLC
- Barry Schultz, Atos Origin
- Gerhard Greeff, Bytes Systems Integration
- Charlotta Johnsson, Lund University
- Serena Moreno, Rockwell Software
- Rod Parry, Factory IQ
- Michael Walton, Atos Origin
- Chris Will, Apriso Corporation