South of St Louis, MO. : Small manufacturing operation, 300 employees, textiles. Typical Lead Time, 8-12 weeks. Owner on site, plant manager hired contractor to help reduce inventory and hit due dates. Assessment indicated flow was o disaster. Arranged for one typical order to be tagged with mylar helium balloons. Balloons moved with various parts of order. Created awareness of random nature of flow. Executed transition to manufacturing cells. Cells designed with lego's, white board, post it's and people from shop floor. Plant eventually converted to 90% cellular manufacturing. An order now can move from raw to finished in 20 to 45 minutes with output slightly better than one unit per minute. Start and Ship same day. Company was on verge of installing bar-code system to track WIP. Bar-code project canceled as unnecessary. MRP system rudimentary home grown variety. No need to upgrade. Owner drives a Lexus. Business has expanded since then.

Augusta, GA. : Manufacturer experiencing difficulty with quality. Had no written instructions or standards. Laid out a simple dBaseIII program to accept information from shop floor personnel. Personally interviewed and wrote standards for a dozen or so operations. Contacted local college and subcontracted completion to grad student. Standards written for all operations. Client subsequently began to leverage that work toward ISO certification.

Abbeville, SC. : Small Supplier to Sears and others felt they had inadequate warehouse space. Wanted a warehouse layout that would meet their needs. Studied problem, developed template for solutions. Subcontracted former employee and grad student from local university to execute under my direction. Developed method to use simple database program to allocate space as needed. Increased useful storage volume by 30% without spending any money for racks or other hardware.

Greenville, SC. : Lab wanted to decrease time from parts dropped off to parts on test. Developed database application to generate load profiles and forward visibility. System demonstrated about the same time lab moved to Mexico. Lab using manual system at least through startup phase. Quoted fixed price for project, project functionality expanded as project unfolded. Delivered project for price quoted.

Fitchburg, MA. : Large Manufacturer of turbomachinery wanted TOC training internally and then to supplier to ensure high Customer Service Level through several Distribution Centers. Given data pulled from their own system., series of spreadsheets designed to create a master schedule that ensures feasibility and maximizes Customer Service while driving inventory down. System roll-out included visits to KS, PA, NJ and Juarez, Mexico.

Hartwell, GA. : Tier One Automotive supplier needed faster, more effective Master Scheduling methods to ensure Automotive requirements met efficiently. Developed spreadsheets to do exactly that. Task that previously took three days/week every week now requires less than 1/2 day every week. As a side benefit, trucks were balanced and filled to capacity.

Thomas J. Krupka, CFPIM, Jonah
231 Deer Spring Lane
Simpsonville, SC 29680-6520
(W)864.962-6702 (F)864.962-6778
krupka@shortleadtime.com