In 1997, the Davenport Works plant of Alcoa Milled Products was trying to reduce its inventory as part of its APS (lean manufacturing) implementation. Late in the year, they discovered that items waiting for a process called stress relieving were taking up a good deal of money and space. A Quick Response Manufacturing technique called time slicing was proposed to solve the problem, but it took a simulation model to convince the Davenport staff to implement it. We found that time slicing was far superior to traditional methods of scheduling in terms of efficiency, and just as effective. Once operating practices were changed, the path in question experienced a flow time reduction of 50%.
| Number of Pages : | 3 |
| Published : | 11/01/2000 |
