The small lot vendor would have a competitive advantage. The large lot vendor also has a lot of unwanted inventory because they can’t reliably predict how much to make and in what mix.

Tantalizing, isn’t it!

If you’re worried about what kind of fabrics your demographic will want, you can request suggestions on Kathleen’s bulletin board, and I’ll bet you money that she’d be happy to feature your start-up in at least one post, so there’s some free market research and targeted advertising right there.

First, I am going to assume that you subscribe to the wisdom of making batches smaller and changeover faster. This means you don’t overproduce everything you will need for the next two weeks in the name of “efficiency,” but actually just take up space, tie up money, and risk getting stuck with unsold goods. If you are still trying to become efficient by maximizing the utilization of machines or workers, there is a different discussion that needs to take place.

It also assumes your customer has learned not to order all she will need for the whole season, expecting you to deliver it all at one time.

Your production will be paced to customer demand, with some mix of products you need to deliver this week. The pure AAA B AAA might not fit your particular product mix, customer mix and demand pattern, but there is some pattern you can discern.

One thing you will certainly do, no matter what this week’s orders look like, is balance your use of labor and machines. If you have two designs, one that takes 5 minutes on machine X and the other taking 10 minutes, and you have 500 of each to make today, you don’t want to schedule all of the 5-minute designs in the morning, and all the 10-minute designs in the afternoon. Why? Because lots of other operations won’t be running at the same 1:2 ratio. You will have machine X’s operator sitting and waiting, or piling up work waiting for her to get through it.

The effect on upstream and downstream processes is mentioned above.

You might not need or want to level by the hour, but you might want to level the week’s work across the day’s. It will take a close study of your products, the pattern of demand, the way your materials are delivered, the number of operations in the process, etc., to look at how non-level production is affecting flow and how you can make improvements using the principle of balancing and leveling.

I’m going to give you a quick inadequate answer and follow up with a better answer later.

The basic idea relates to flow, and the elimination of batch-and-queue processes.

If one model requires more work at machine X than another, the even mix means that the operator can move the same number of pieces per hour by balancing within her operation. The next operation then doesn’t get bunches of one, then bunches of the other, which might throw off their pace.

you will utilize parts at the same pace throughout the day, making it easier for the previous operation to work to the same pace throughout the day. If each model has a different machine (eyelets made in one, but not the other?) the eyelet step can go at the same pace all day.

It’s good to keep throwing conventional wisdom against lean practices to really understand why lean works.

Today’s entry is making improvements for sub-team members performing the same type of work. In other words, I’ll be writing about troubleshooting in the pattern department. One of the clearest example of this is when I worked for an American…

AAA B AAA B AAA B

woah, this really goeas against everything I’ve elearned about the advantages of production-style manufacturing. Can Kathleen or Karen comment more on why mixing the work up in this way provides an advantage?

In addition, since the people with “nothing to do” have increased their productivity by thinking lean, they are ideal teachers for other product teams to improve their processes.

Another tactic is to balance work, and mix in another style. If it were cars, the lean-ers would be looking to make them according to demand (takt time) in a pattern like this:

AAA B AAA B AAA B …..

That REALLY makes people think, because they have to look at how to make changeovers short and efficient, and what styles have enough affinity for one another that they use similar processes (and perhaps materials such as thread) through the cell.

But the death of the owner and the loss of the momentum – and business – is the big problem – if leadership/management doesn’t get it, you’re pretty much sunk. Except that everyone takes away what they learned and might be able to use it for another smarter company.

Karen