Oil pump manufacturer experienced a myriad of issues when one of their main lines went out of operation unexpectedly
Pain Points Summary:
- Manufacturer failed to schedule preventative maintenance on their lines, resulting in an unforeseen issue knocking out a line for two weeks
- The operation leader and team of schedulers spent two full days working to reallocate orders to other lines in the plant
- Staff was unable to see the impacted orders and customers tied to the issue
- Oil pumps set to be produced on other lines experienced delays due to a temporary halt in the operation
- Manufacturer expedited the parts needed for the repairs – raising the cost of the line failure
- Emergency shifts and overtime was utilized to extend the run times of other lines to make up for the line outage
- Delays in orders being produced and in-hands dates were pushed out 1 to nearly 2 months in some cases
- Manufacturer was unable to accept new business opportunities during the time of the line issue
- Many customers cancelled orders when the new in-hands date to account for the delay was communicated to them by the account team
Optimization Summary:
- Easily plan and schedule their production around required or scheduled maintenance windows
- Complete line balancing optimizations to shift production to another line or bunch of lines to account for maintenance windows
- Impacted customers, orders, and shifts in delivery dates are easily visible in a color-coded charts, graphs, and tables
- In this case, accounting for an unforeseen issue, the ability to replan and reschedule given the unfortunate circumstance would take minutes, not days
- Manufacturer would save on expedited shipping costs to obtain necessary parts
- No emergency shifts or overtime would be needed to account for or make up for the line outage
- Updated delivery dates can be communicated to the customers in a timely manner – saving the order or reprioritizing around the delay
- Manufacturer can keep accepting new business opportunities