Friday, May 13, 2016

Continuous Improvement Aided by Production Simulation in Mixed Model Systems


Although lean manufacturing emphasizes the culture of continuous improvement, what appeals to senior management most, rightly or wrongly, is the actual gain in KPIs from individual improvements. A free demo copy of a simulation tool, Velflow Sim for mixed model production is available at http://www.optisol.biz/mixedmodel.htm

The magnitude of true gains in KPIs from any specific improvement in one variable (factor) may depend on the levels of that variable and many other variables and production requirements. It is not easy to evaluate it in advance always due to lack of explicit, quantitative relationship between gains in KPIs and improvements in variables.

Pursuing improvements with good intuition, faith and commonsense may not necessarily improve KPIs as much as expected. This may sometimes cause a disappointment to the people involved and possibly some loss of confidence in the improvement drive itself. The resulting disappointment is due to lack of advance assessment of how those improvements can impact KPIs.

Qualitative understanding of the potential impact of improvements on KPIs is not adequate for efficient improvement drive. The continuous improvement effort can be more effective and rewarding with quantitative assessment of the impact in advance. The assessment can reduce our apprehension about the true impact. Such assessment is possible with meaningful workflow prediction. Production simulation which takes into account the hidden relation between KPIs and variables of the system can offer excellent capability for workflow prediction, measurement of gains in KPIs, what-if analysis and capacity planning.

Production simulation carried out on tables using pieces like poker chips are quite useful in training programs, but not helpful for workflow prediction and what-if analysis in general. On the other hand, there are versatile, sophisticated, commercial software tools for discrete event simulation of production. They offer excellent predictive capacity in any general production system. But, they usually demand knowledge and expertise in simulation and considerable training.

Velflow Sim is a simple, handy software tool which provides predictive capability for mixed model production in which different products are sequentially run (one after another) on production lines with the possibility of setup times depending on product sequence. Mixed model production lines can be found in many plants and manufacturing cells. Velflow Sim quantifies the impact on WIP and order lead times of factors like setup time, cycle time, material movement time, inventory, batch size, resource capacity, etc.

As illustrated in our YouTube video, http://youtu.be/sFcwnNee7BU, Velflow Sim supports fast, extensive and reliable what-if analysis with the help of its capability to predict workflow. What-if analysis in turn helps identify improvement opportunities which can bring very high marginal gains in KPIs. Velflow Sim can make the improvement drive more effective in mixed mode production.

A free demo copy of Velflow Sim is available at http://www.optisol.biz/mixedmodel.htm

It can be run to simulate the production described in the YouTube video. Even the free demo copy will be useful to convey some important concepts in training programs on Lean as shown in the video.

I would like to have your opinions on the purpose and functionality of Velflow Sim.


Prasad Velaga, PhD
President, Optisol
Let’s connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/prasadvelaga
e-mail: prasad@optisol.biz