The launch manager was identifying open issues as his team was preparing for a final ramp up in production. One of the concerns that needed to be addressed was the issue of the material handling system. Specifically, what would be the impact of a fully ramped up production schedule to the self guided vehicles? (SGV’s) Did they currently have enough SGV’s, and if not, what improvements could be made to the production or material delivery system to make it so?

The launch manager did not have the resources or the time to take on such an endeavor, so IET was asked to supplement their launch team and provide answers to these critical questions.

IET measured the current performance of the SGV’s under the current production volume, routing rules and delivery logic to create a baseline and use in the creation of a capacity model. Utilizing actual production volumes, measured process times, delay times and downtimes, IET created a capacity model that predicted the customer was dangerously close to being over utilized for the proposed ramp up in daily production volume.

IET itemized the major factors contributing to delay, downtime and other general inefficiencies of the material handling system and coupled them with actionable improvement initiatives. Most of the improvement ideas required little or no capital investment, but led to a cumulative improvement in efficiency of more than 25%.