We have all heard of ‘Pull Systems’ and the revered Kanban process, developed by Toyota to control production and inventory of parts and assemblies in their ‘high volume, low variety’ environment. Used in conjunction with ‘supermarkets’, the flow of work in progress is controlled in terms of FIFO (First-in, First-out), and inventory levels are capped… Read more »
Activities undertaken to launch new products can cause risks, which need to be effectively managed if the return of business growth is to be realised. Risk management is integral to the pursuit of product launch excellence and strategic minded organisations do not strive to eliminate risk. Rather, these organisations seek to manage risk exposures across… Read more »
The International Aerospace Action Group created an Aerospace sector-wide standard for Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) and Production Part Approval Process (PPAP). Rolls-Royce was an early adopter of the requirements defined in AS/EN/SJAC 9145:2016, with a requirement for all tier 1 suppliers to comply with the standard. This was communicated by a Notice to Suppliers… Read more »
Product safety is an increasingly high priority for the automotive supply chain, and rightly so: recent years have seen a string of global product safety crises in the industry. Carmakers and their suppliers are the subject of media and regulatory scrutiny like never before, and the trail of recalls, regulatory investigations and litigation speaks for… Read more »
Team Leader Essentials Programme (TLE) Team Leaders play a vital and pivotal role in ensuring the organisation achieves and exceeds their key strategic objectives in today’s competitive manufacturing market but the question that arises is “how well are they trained?”, in modern lean manufacturing methodologies, ensuring their capabilities are adequately supporting the business’s needs. It’s… Read more »
To understand the differences between Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Failure Modes and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), you need to go backwards in time. Let’s start with a little bit of history. The concept of planning for risk management started back in 1949 when the American military issued a directive to suppliers – MIL… Read more »
“Without standards there can be no improvement”. So reads the frequently quoted words of Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System. But what is Standardised Work? And how does it support improvement? One of the misconceptions around Standardised Work is that capturing a process on a prescribed document and posting it at the… Read more »
Why is NPI Important? Aspirational growth targets are fundamental to future business strategy and a large part of achieving this growth will involve the introduction of new opportunities and new products into the business. Developing profitable, timely, high-quality products is more important today than ever before. Visibility to product performance has never been higher, while… Read more »
The supply chain is constantly changing for all industries. With the introduction of new technologies, innovative systems and the ever-changing demand of products, companies have been forced to change how they manage their operations and logistics to suit. These have all collectively contributed to the increased importance of having a smooth flow of management to… Read more »
Companies within the Aerospace industry have long since recognised that although they compete to gain market share, they also share common challenges. In the past, they have created differing techniques and methods to try and achieve the same results. To address this, the aviation, space, and defence industry established the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG)… Read more »
