Everyone will have to work faster, harder and longer hours in order to get jobs done in less time.
To get jobs out fast, machines and people must keep busy all the time.
To reduce lead-times, efficiencies need to improve.
All departments and suppliers must place great importance on “on-time” delivery performance.
Installing a material requirements planning (MRP) system will help reduce lead-times.
Negotiate quantity discounts with suppliers, since long lead-time items need to be ordered in large quantities.
Encourage customers to buy products in large quantities by offering price breaks and quantity discounts.
Implement QRM by forming teams in each department.
The reason for implementing QRM is to charge customers more for rush jobs.
Implementing QRM will require large investments in technology.
Find whole new ways of completing a job with the focus on minimizing lead-times.
Plan to operate at 80 percent or even 70 percent capacity on critical resources.
Measure the reduction of lead-times, making this the main performance measure.
Stay with measuring and rewarding reduction of lead-times.
Use MRP to plan and coordinate materials. Restructure the manufacturing organization into simpler product-orientated cells. Complement this with a new material control method that combines the best of push and pull strategies.
Motivate suppliers to implement QRM, resulting in smaller lots at lower cost, better quality and shorter lead-times.
Educate customers about QRM and negotiate a schedule of moving to smaller lots sized at reasonable prices.
Cut through functional boundaries by forming a Quick Response Office Cell (QROC), a closed-loop, collocated, multi-functional, cross-trained team of people responsible for a family of products. Empower the QROC to make necessary decisions.
The reason for embarking on the QRM journey is that it leads to a truly lean company with a more secure future.
The biggest obstacle to QRM is not technology, but mind-set. Combat this through training. Next, engage in low-cost or no-cost lead-time reductions. Leave big-ticket technology solutions for a later stage.
