Dr. Rajan Suri
President
Suri Consulting and Seminars, LLC
Madison, WI
QRM: A Companywide Strategy to Reduce Lead Times, Particularly for High-Mix Low-Volume and Custom-Engineered Products
While everyone knows that
"time is money"
for manufacturing enterprises
Time is a Lot More Money
than most managers realize!
To take advantage of this fact,
I developed Quick Response Manufacturing, a companywide strategy for reducing lead times. QRM reduces both external and internal lead times throughout an organization. Reducing external lead times means rapidly designing and manufacturing products for specific customer needs. The internal aspect focuses on reducing lead times for all tasks within the enterprise, such as the time to approve an engineering change or the time to issue a purchase order to a supplier. Reducing these lead times results not only in quick response, but also in improved quality and lower cost. Using QRM, companies with high-mix low-volume and custom products have reduced their lead times by 80-90%.
The lead time and cost reductions from QRM have also enabled companies to compete effectively against low-wage countries. (See Business Journal article.)
Although Lean Manufacturing techniques are popular today, the key Lean tools are derived from the Toyota Production System and work best for higher-volume production. In fact, core techniques in Lean such as Takt Time, Standard Work, Level Scheduling and Kanban are designed to eliminate variability, and these techniques break down in the face of high-mix low-volume or custom production.
QRM is designed from the ground up for companies making hix-mix low-volume and custom-engineered products. In QRM you still eliminate dysfunctional variability (caused by errors and poor systems -- e.g. rework, machine breakdowns, or constantly changing priorities). However, you do not eliminate strategic variability (introduced by a company to maintain its competitive edge -- e.g.offering numerous product options or individually customized products). Instead, in QRM you exploit strategic variability to gain competitive advantage. QRM enables you to do this through four core concepts (see sidebar on the right).
Want more details?
Here is a simple diagram showing how QRM goes beyond Lean and Six Sigma.
Here are Ten Points on how QRM goes beyond Lean...
QRM is your company's future!
In today's world we are seeing growing demand for more product options and individually customized products. Thus QRM strategy is going to be increasingly important for competitiveness in the future.
See the amazing results achieved by companies in four industries (aluminum, HVAC, plastics and equipment manufacturing).
QRM strategy is based on four core concepts:
A key building block of QRM is a precise way of defining lead time. This QRM metric is called Manufacturing Critical-path Time or MCT.
For more details on all these points, see my latest book on QRM as well as my recent book on MCT.
Copyright 2013 Rajan Suri.
All rights reserved.
Dr. Rajan Suri
President
Suri Consulting and Seminars, LLC
Madison, WI