Category Archives: Dr. Ron

Materials expert Dr. Ron Lasky is a professor of engineering and senior lecturer at Dartmouth, and senior technologist at Indium Corp. He has a Ph.D. in materials science from Cornell University, and is a prolific author and lecturer, having published more than 40 papers. He received the SMTA Founders Award in 2003.

Emerson’s Rule

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As Patty, The Professor and Pete maneuvered around the partially completed product, Patty noticed signs everywhere that proclaimed: “Being Responsive to Our Customer is Our Biggest Asset.”

Pete commented, “This place is so crowded with partially built product that not another tube of solder paste or even a solder preform could fit out here.”

The trio then approached a technician who was working on a product changeover. Patty introduced herself in Spanish and asked what he was doing.

Pedro’s face beamed when he heard Patty addressing him in his native tongue. He responded to her in Spanish.

“I’m doing a product changeover,” Pedro replied, “We are really good at them, because we do so many. This is actually the second changeover I’ve done on this line today,” he continued.

“Your first job, must have been a very small lot size,” Pete commented.

“Oh, no,” Pedro chuckled. “We never ran the first job.” He went on, “Another more important job than the fist came along and we were told by our supervisor to changeover for that one.”

“You mean you never ran any boards for the first job?” The Professor queried.

“That’s right,” said Pedro. “This only happens a couple of times a month.”

“I really like working here,” Pedro continued. “I feel proud that I have learned to be so good at changeovers and all of us have been able to work a lot of overtime since the ‘Being Responsive’ campaign started. We feel like we are really making a difference and getting great pay,” he beamed. “Just look at all of the product on the floor,” We are really producing a lot of stuff.”

Our team strolled away from Pedro and his coworkers and ran into a very hyper man, Phil Marcos, production manager. Phil was one of those types that made people nervous just being near him.

“Great job! Great job! These folks are really supporting my responsiveness campaign,” Phil projected at 250 words a minute in a strong Long Island accent. “I don’t have much time to chat, I have to stop production on line 4 for a ‘Being Responsive’ job that just came in. I need to have Pedro and the ‘changeover guys’ change that line over for this new job,” he finished as he trotted away. As he looked back, he added, “I’m so excited that next quarter we will have 15% more production and that sales are up 10% this year.”

As Phil left, The Professor commented, “It’s a good thing Phil doesn’t speak Spanish, I’m not sure my ancient brain could process 250 Spanish words a minute.”

They all burst out in laughter.

“I wonder where they will put all of the WIP when production increases 15%?” asked Pete.

The team spent the better part of two days reviewing production and inventory figures. They learned that the site had eight SMT/through-hole mixed assembly lines. Before Phil Marcos arrival, normally six of the lines were dedicated to jobs with very large lot sizes. Some of the jobs ran for months without a changeover. Since Phil’s arrival, high-mix, low-volume jobs have been sought by sales. The two lines devoted to such jobs in the past were insufficient to handle the influx in high-mix jobs. Customers demanded fast turn for these jobs as they paid a 5% premium. Since profit margins at this site were about 10%, these jobs seemed like a great deal financially. To meet this new demand most lines were regularly disrupted. There seemed to be little logic in how a line was selected, but all agreed that the facility looked “responsive.”

Pete found a room for Patty, The Professor and himself to review the data. Pete had been watching The Professor and it was clear that he was holding back to let Pete and Patty learn by searching for the answer without too much help from him.

“The loss in profit clearly relates to the changeovers,” Patty said. “Professor, why don’t you let Pete and I figure this one out and see if we get it right?” she added.

The Professor beamed at his two protégés.

After numerous calculations, Patty and Pete presented their conclusions to The Professor. After a few minor suggestions, The Professor agreed with their conclusions. They went off to review their findings with Harry Hopkins, Jane (the new corporate CFO), and hyper Phil Marcos.

Patty started the meeting with a preamble. “We developed a spreadsheet of costs, sales and profit. We are sure it is not the type of format finance uses, but it helps us to understand the problem.”

She projected the spreadsheet onto the screen and continued, “As you can see, sales are indeed up by 10% for this year, but that extra income was more than lost because inventory costs are up 66% and labor costs up 22%.” Patty went on, “The labor cost is understandable: you are doing many changeovers, often on second shift. Not only do you have to pay overtime premiums, but the many changeovers cause some disruption to all workers … your breakrooms have never been so crowded!

“Inventory carrying costs are a little harder to understand,” Patty continued. “Your increase in inventory is mostly product on the shop floor or WIP. Last year there was almost no WIP, now there is about $4 million in partially finished product on the floor at anytime. This decreases your inventory turns from 17 to about 10. We were able to make these inventory turn estimates, because holding each week of inventory costs about 1% of the yearly cost of all of the inventory. The bottom line is that the WIP is killing profitability, and the 5% cost adder for the responsiveness jobs doesn’t come close to making up for this loss.”

Hyper Phil moaned, and then rapidly said, “You’re saying that my being responsive to the customer campaign is a failure.”

“Not really, Phil,” intoned The Professor. “Just be more careful in your implementation.”

“Can you give an example?” moaned Phil.

“May I tackle this one?” asked Pete. “We did quite a thorough analysis and are convinced that you can implement 90% of your ‘responsiveness’ jobs and not negatively affect production. As an example, four ‘responsiveness’ jobs last week began at 1 PM and finished at 6 PM, too late for the day’s shipments. They didn’t ship until 10 AM the next day. They could have been assembled on the next shift, with no disruptive changeovers and no extra WIP hanging around.”

Patty added, “We believe that you should leave five of your eight lines undisturbed to handle jobs with very large lot sizes and have three lines for some large lot sizes and the ‘responsiveness’ jobs.

“We can work with you to develop a plan to minimize changeovers and WIP while continuing to be responsive. Your shop flow should be organized more like a ballet than a hockey game, quotinq Phil Crosby. You can be responsive and minimize disruption on the shop floor … a balance is needed,” she summed up.

“One thing to remember, is ‘Emerson’s Rule,’ ” The Professor interjected.

“What is that,” everyone asked.

“It is from my dear friend, Professor Bob Emerson of Binghamton University. He says, ‘Never release a job to the floor unless you are committed to finishing it uninterrupted.’ Bob is an expert on inventory management, he knows the crippling cost of inventory if not well managed, especially WIP, which includes much added value.”

The meeting broke up with Phil, Harry and Jane gratefully thanking the trio. Patty and Pete agreed to stay for a few days to help Phil set up a modified production control system.

“Boy, I was surprised how well that was accepted,“ Patty confessed.

Pete, who usually has insider info, responded, “Phil was told to work with us or else …. I guess he listened.”

On that note, Patty’s cellphone buzzed. It was her mother, with the latest wedding details.

All the best,

Dr. Ron

Searching for Lost Profit

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After just finishing her department’s monthly activity report, Patty took a break to stare out her window, admiring the beauty of last night’s fresh snowfall. Her mind quickly went to the events of the past week.

Rob had “popped the question” and Patty had quickly said yes. Their mothers were ecstatic. Both Patty and Rob liked and enjoyed each other’s parents. Patty recognized this as a blessed situation, but both mothers were now spending 10 hours each day planning the wedding. A result, Patty and Rob were both fielding several calls a day from each mom. Patty decided to go “with the flow” and count her blessings that both she and Rob had great parents.

She briefly looked down at the ring Rob had given her. It was a striking two carat emerald with 0.4 carat diamonds on either side. Rob was concerned that Patty might not like an emerald, but he explained that the price of diamonds is controlled and that “you could pave your driveway with diamonds for each equally good sapphire, ruby, and especially emerald that exists in nature.”

“All the emerald mines of Colombia produce only one or two good 2 carat emeralds per year,” he went on to say.

Well, one of them was right there on her finger. In addition to the uniqueness of emerald, the setting was in rhodium, the hardest and rarest of the precious metals. “Five hundred times more rare than gold,” Rob told her. She was especially impressed when she looked up rhodium on the Web and found this quote: “Rhodium has been used for honours, or to symbolize wealth, when more commonly used metals such as silver, gold or platinum are deemed insufficient.” Gold and platinum insufficient!?

Rob was secretive about how he found such an apparently rare ring. But it was consistent with his many other successes in life. She was thrilled to have him as a future hubby, even if she did beat him at golf.

These happy and a little stressful thoughts were interrupted, by Pete coming to her door.

“Hey, kiddo, get packed, looks like will be going on another trip. Guadalajara, this time. Como es su espanol?” Pete said with gusto.

“Mi espanol es muy bueno. Why do you think we will go to Guadalajara?” Patty asked.

“Well, I just talked to Pedro and he said that they performed our productivity audit. Uptime is 29%, and all lines are time balanced to +/-2%, about as best as could be hoped.”

Patty and her team developed a Productivity Audit from what they learned with The Professor in their recent adventures together.

“Then what is the problem?” Patty inquired.

Pete responded, “Jane, the finance exec we met on our trip to South Carolina, implemented a company-wide profitability software program. It was implemented and Guadalajara is 10% too low. No one can figure out why. I think we’ll want The Professor for this one.”

Patty called and was stunned that The Professor was again available. Apparently this was his off term teaching at Ivy University, as he teaches over the summer.

When our trio arrived at ACME’s Guadalajara facility they all spoke in Spanish. Patty had taken Spanish in 4th grade through high school, Spanish was one of the 7 or 8 languages The Professor spoke and Pete’s grandparents hailed from Puerto Rico. They were surprised that the site GM, Harry Hopkins, asked them to speak in English.

“Give me a break, I grew up in Boston, I can barely speak English,” he joked in his heavy Boston accent. “We want you to help us find that lost 10%, we must be doing something wrong. Help us find it,” Harry implored. “One thing I can tell you is that I am really proud of my team; they are really working hard, you can tell by all of the product that is out there. It makes me proud just to walk out on the shop floor and see all of the product!”, he went on.

Patty was relieved that Harry was so supportive. Apparently Jane had sent the “good word” about how the trio had helped ACME’s South Carolina plant.

As the trio went on a tour, one thing immediately struck Patty, there was hardly room to walk around. There were partly assembled boards all over the place.

At the end of the tour Patty spoke up, “This facility is striking in how much partially completed product is on the shop floor.”

And therein lies the problem,” responded The Professor.

How can profits be off when uptime and line balancing are so good? Could it be that Guadalajara uses poor solder pastes, fluxes or performs? Will our illustrious trio find the problem? Does Patty really like her emerald engagement ring?

Stay tuned for the latest.

Thoughts on Lean

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Six Sigma has been with us for about 25 years and while embraced by many is not without controversy.  Lean, however, has few critics.

The essence of Lean is:

Lean manufacturing or lean production, often known simply as “Lean,” is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, “value” is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. Basically, lean is centered around creating more value with less work.”

I just returned from IPC’s first Lean Sigma Conference.  It was my privilege to be one of the folks who helped IPC’s Dave Torp in organizing this event.  I attended all the workshops and sessions at the conference.  To say that it was inspirational was an understatement.  The presenters mostly were people who have implemented Lean with considerable success.  They were passionate about its success and promise.  Many of the presenters were from companies that have not only weathered the economic strong, but are prospering.  One company has doubled in size in the past 18 months — to 400 or so — at the expense of a competitor that went out of business because they could not compete with a Lean company.

An interesting aspect of Lean is that almost all the companies practicing it, require their suppliers to be lean organizations, too.  The reason: Lean works.

I see Lean as a significant trend, embraced by management and workers alike.  If you are not Lean now, you must be, and soon!

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

An Interview with Patty

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Folks,

While at SMTAI a few weeks ago, I ran into Patty. She agreed to sit down for an interview. Here it is.

Dr. Ron (DR): Patty, it’s great to see you here at SMTAI. Congratulations on your promotion and many accomplishments over the past year.

Patty: Thanks. BTW, I really enjoyed your talk, “SMT: The Next Twenty-Five Years.” Was there really a song, when the transistor radio came out, called “Transistor Sister?”

DR: Absolutely! “Transistor Sister” was a part of my youth. It was sung by Freddy Cannon in 1961.

Patty, a number of folks wrote in saying that they liked my blog postings about you, but they felt that the stories couldn’t possibly be true in a modern electronic assembly company.  Can you enlighten us?

Patty: Yes, I saw those comments. All the blog postings have been real case studies; if anything, they are understated. The Professor claims that 10 to 15 years ago, when profit margins were higher and OEMs did much of their own assembly, assembly optimization was viewed as a science and assembly was orchestrated more like a ballet. Process discipline existed. As assembly left the OEMs and profit margins decreased, there was little money for assembly process optimization analysis. Electronic assembly entered the era of “hockey” management. Much of assembly became disorganized and subject to “the tyranny of the urgent.”

DR: So I gather your point would be that right when we need process science the most, we aren’t investing in it?

Patty: Process science would be nice, but I’m convinced if management just had a sense of urgency about line uptime and productivity it would make a world of difference.

DR: “Hockey Management?” “Tyranny of the Urgent?”

Patty: “Hockey Management” is a term developed by Phil Crosby in his book, Quality is Free. He tells us that electronics assembly should be orchestrated like a ballet. Everything is planned ahead, we know where the stencil is for the next job, the parts are on the feeder racks or at least the reels are ready, etc. This is “Ballet Management” (everything organized.) An example of Hockey Management would be a case where the team has lined up the next job, all set up is complete … management calls and tells the team to run another job … 6 hours is lost. In an assembly line, that is a loss of at least $15,000-$75,000 of product. Profit lost, never to be found again.

DR: “Tyranny of the Urgent?”

Patty: You are so busy doing what is urgent (i.e., switching the job that lost 6 production hours) that you never do what is important (i.e., setting up a system that minimizes such job switching.) By the way, as you can imagine, I learned all of this stuff from The Professor.

DR: He’s an interesting guy. I know him a little, I’ve seen him a few times when I visited Ivy University. Give us your perspective.

Patty: In addition to being super smart, he is very kind. But, I have to admit that traveling with him is a little stressful.

DR: How so?

Patty: Well, in addition to being smart, he is strongly convinced that it is important to be able to perform calculations in your head. He claims that if Fred [see “Saving a House, Losing a Mansion”], could do this and practiced it, he would have known instinctively that the solder paste that “Saved a House” was “Losing a Mansion.” His first thought would have been to estimate what the minutes of downtime, caused by the cheaper paste, cost.

DR: I’m still not sure I understand why traveling with The Professor stressful?

Patty: Oh yeah, I forgot. He wants to make sure I am an “ace” at doing math in my head. He is always giving me problems to calculate when we travel. It can be a little stressful when he is disappointed when I don’t know something or can’t perform the calculation.

DR: Can you give us an example?

Patty: On our last trip he asked me to calculate the amount of times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia would fill Cayuga Lake. He gave me the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia as about 300 billion barrels and the dimensions of Cayuga Lake as approximately 50 miles long, 2 miles wide and 200 feet deep. You should have seen the look in his eyes when I told him that I didn’t know that there were 40 gallons in a barrel and one cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds. Knowing this and the fact that a gallon of water is 8 lbs., you can calculate that a cubic foot is about 8 gallons, hence a barrel is about 5 cubic feet. He thinks that everyone knows things like this that; of course, they don’t really know.  How many square feet per acre, how many acres in a square mile, yada, yada, yada? But he means well.

DR: Well we should probably go back to the conference. Can you close by giving us a summary of the key things to do to improve productivity?

Patty: Sure, in order of importance:

1.       Measure line uptime

a.       Set continuous improvement goals for line uptime

b.      Have a plan to reduce downtime, especially for changeovers and line assists

2.       Use the best-performing materials (solder paste, underfill, flux, prefroms, etc.) and supplies (stencils, squeegees, etc.).

a.       Remember the lessons in “Saving a House, Losing a Mansion), the best performing materials and supplies are always the cheapest.

3.       Have a “Line Down Management Escalation Plan.”

a.       Senior management should be alerted if the line is down for an unplanned reason for more than 30 minutes.

4.       Ensure that your lines are time balanced.

There are a few more points we can discuss at another time, but these are likely the most important. Oh, and all of Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves would fill Cayuga Lake 2 to 3 times!

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Saving a House, Losing a Mansion

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Patty and The Professor agreed to work with two of the local process engineers to develop a plan of attack to try and find the lost productivity.

Patty spoke first. “It’s tempting to look just at the new solder paste, but this approach wouldn’t be thorough.”

The Professor and the two process engineers, Joe and Ann, agreed. So they went ahead and developed a thorough productivity assessment plan, including uptime and line balancing measurements and evaluating changeover and assist times. Ann pointed out that one of the five lines was still using the old paste. All agreed that this situation was good news as they would have a new paste to old paste comparison. It was already lunch time and everyone was hungry, so off they went to a local Outback. While riding in the car, Patty’s cellphone rang. It was Rob.

“Hey Patty,” Rob cheerfully started. “Guess what I shot last night at the Golf Club of New England — a four under par 68! The pro told me it was the best round this year at the course from the back tees.”

“Rob, that’s great!” Patty cheerfully responded. Truth be told, she was really happy for Rob. He was the No. 2 golfer on the men’s team at Tech a few years ago as a senior. She was a junior then and was the best women golfer in Tech’s history. The few times they played then, she beat him. Ever since her dinner date, after their success at AJAX, they had been a couple. At the time she had been thinking of breaking up with Jason and Rob’s invite to dinner was all the catalyst that she needed. In the past year or so, Jason would just watch sports on TV and drink beer. He didn’t have a fitness program or a real plan for his life. Rob was so much different. He worked out, mostly to improve his golf game and he was getting a master’s degree part time.

After they started dating, Rob and Patty played golf together with some other guy friends from Tech. She usually shot the low score, but the three other guys were longer off the tee than she was. Her superior iron play and short game made the difference.

At lunch this working foursome talked about the audit they were about to perform.

“There is one comical thing we should tell you before we start,” Joe said with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ts about the ‘Saving a House Program.’ ”

At that, Ann started laughing and inadvertently started choking on her “sweet tea.” Patty was about to perform the Heimlich maneuver when Ann revived.

With Ann still red in the face and laughing, The Professor requested, “Yes, please tell us.”

Joe chimed in, “So that Ann doesn’t choke to death, let me take a stab at it. The new cheaper solder paste has not been very popular and has generated many complaints. The new COO, Fred, decided he had to do something. He estimated that the new paste saves $100,000 a year on all five lines; that’s about what a modest house costs locally. So he tells all of the complainers that using the new paste saves enough money in a year to buy a new house. He even found a house for sale on the internet for $100,000 and had posters of it made with the saying: ‘Saving Enough for a House.’ It worked; people stopped complaining.”

“Joe, can you tell us what some of the complaints were about the solder paste?” asked The Professor.

“Well, for one thing, it is stiff coming out of the tubes or jars, we have to knead it or it won’t print,” Joe responded.

“Hmm,” both Patty and The Professor mused.

“Also, if we stop a line for a few minutes the paste stiffens up and we have to perform some dummy prints to kneed it,” chimed in Ann. “Sometimes even after this, the first print has to be discarded due to poor hole fill. It wastes time and solder paste.”

“Don’t forget the smell,” Joe teased.

At that, Ann just about spit up her sweet tea.

“The new paste literally stinks,” Joe added. “Fortunately, the vendor added some perfume recently.”

“What about reliability of the finished product?” The Professor asked evenly.

“That’s what is surprising. It’s as good as the old paste.” Ann replied. “We performed some tests and asked around, the reliability is very good.”

“A pleasant surprise indeed,” The Professor said.

The little group finished lunch and headed back to get to work on the audit. Ann and Patty and Joe and The Professor formed teams and went off to the factory. They performed detailed analysis of changeover times, assist times, line balancing, uptime, etc., on the four lines using the new solder paste and the one line using the old solder paste.

As Patty approached one of the lines she saw a cheerful looking gent about 45 years old replenishing the solder on one of the stencil printers. Ann introduced her to Wilbur and asked if it was OK for Patty to ask him some questions.

“Darlin,” he said to Ann in his backwoods drawl, “Anything you gorgeous gals want to ask me is jus fine.”

“How does replenishing the new paste compare to the old paste?” Patty asked.

“Well, it takes a lot longer, stirring the paste and all, but to “Save a House” I’m willing to put up with it, sighed Wilbur.

After a day-and-a-half of work, the team reassembled. The Professor suggested that Patty lead the discussion. Many calculations and comparisons were performed, finally after several hours they were ready to meet with Fred Perkins and Jane Wilson. Patty agreed to speak.

Patty, addressed the small gathering. She presented the approach they used to collect data, their analysis techniques and the fact that they had reached a consensus. The evidence, she said, is persuasive that:
1. The site productivity is down about 8%, which will reduce profits about 12%.
2. The main culprit appears to be the new solder paste.

At this Fred slammed his fist on the disk. His face a bright crimson, he shouted at Patty, “Liar, you corporate types are all alike! You come here from your Ivory Tower and tell us how to assemble a product. You have never had to meet a payroll and make a profit in your life. I’ve been out on the line. It only takes two or three minutes longer per changeover with the new paste and replenish times are even less.”

At these comments Jane rolled her eyes and glared at Fred. It was clear she wasn’t intimidated by him.
Patty shot back, “Fred you are correct; let’s look at the numbers. We measured your average uptime at about 25%, which is quite good. That means the lines are running two hours in an eight hour shift or 120 minutes. Eight percent of 120 minutes is about ten minutes a day. A typical line has two changeovers a day each requiring 2 extra minutes and 6 solder paste replenishments ,taking an extra 1 minute each with the new paste. This totals 10 minutes, hence cuts production by 8%.”

Fred screamed back, “This is mathematical gobblygook. I saved the company $100,000 a year.” At this he stormed out of the room.

The remaining folks stared at each other. Finally Jane broke the silence, “It never occurred to me how precious a few minutes here and there can affect profit. With the new paste, we will lose about 12% of our total profit of $10 million, or $1.2 million per year. It appears that while Fred was ‘saving a house,’ we were ‘losing a mansion.’ ”

Epilogue: Three weeks later Fred was “promoted” to corporate compliance officer. Jane became the new site CEO/COO. The old solder paste was reinstated a day after Fred left. A few of the old-timers kept some of the “Saving a House” posters for future reminiscing.

‘Paste is Paste’: The Professor Hits the Road

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Patty was staring out the window of her new office. She had just been made manager of a new department responsible for corporate wide productivity and advanced processes. At 25 years old, she was the youngest manager at ACME by six years. She was surprised that Pete was one of the folks in the new department and was concerned that Pete might have trouble accepting her as his boss.

When Patty mentioned her concern, Pete replied, “Hey ‘kid,’ are you joking? I’m thrilled to be in your department. Not only is the work the most interesting, but you are one of the few managers that really knows what they’re doing.”

Considering that Pete was Patty’s father’s age, this vote of confidence meant a lot.

The view out of her office window was terrific. She could see some of the local hills in Southern New Hampshire and the fall color change was striking.  A few coworkers claimed that on a clear day you could just see the top of Mount Monadnock. Patty had made some calculations using the position of her office, the distance and height of the local hills and had proven to herself that “the most-climbed mountain in the US” was 100 meters to short to be seen from her window. But the sky was so clear she couldn’t help by strain her eyes to see it she could get a glimpse of that majestic beak. Her pleasant interlude was jarred by the rude, demanding ringing of her office phone.

“Advanced Processes, Patty speaking,” she cheerfully spoke into the phone.

“Patty, it’s Sam. Can you come to my office now?” the voice on the other end spoke to her.

It was Sam Watkins, the site GM, and his call now did not make her nervous. Ever since the first visit of The Professor, Sam had treated her like a valued member of the team. It was his suggestion to launch a corporate center of competence for productivity and advanced processes and name Patty the manager. When he gave her the job, he said that a lot of the work would be corporate troubleshooting. She expected that Sam’s call related to this topic.

When she entered his office, Sam got right to the point. “Patty, there’s a crisis in our plant in Columbia, SC. A new COO took over four months ago and went on a cost-cutting spree. Since then, the plant’s profit is down 8%. We can’t figure out why. Go there and find out what’s going on. And develop a plan to fix it,” he ordered.

Patty excitedly returned to her office. She called Pete in and they discussed plans for their trip. Patty was trying to limit her use of The Professor, but this assignment seemed to beg for his participation.  His uptime improvement recommendations so impressed management, he was now on a permanent consulting retainer.

As Sam said, “Every time The Professor visits one of our facilities, they make several more million dollars a year. I wish he lived here!”

Patty made a call to The Professor and to her surprise he was available. They agreed to meet at the Columbia airport at noon in two days.

The time passed quickly and before she knew it she was in a rental car driving to the ACME facility in Columbia. Their first meeting was with the assembly process engineering team and the new COO. After introductions, the COO, Fred Perkins, spoke.

“I really don’t know why you are here,” he commented brusquely. “Profits are only down 5%; it’s probably just a random fluctuation.  I came here with a mandate to cut costs and dammit I did. I couldn’t believe what we were paying for solder paste, and I found a vendor that would charge 25% less. This was the first cost savings I implemented. Solder paste is solder paste. It’s just like butter. When I was COO of American Foods, they were paying too much for butter, and I found a vendor that would charge 9% less. Butter is butter, solder paste is solder paste,” he concluded.

“How much money will you save on paste this year,” Patty inquired.

“For all of our five lines, $100,000,” Fred proudly answered.

“How much profit do your lines produce per year?” The Professor asked.

“We have five, 20 -2 lines,” replied Jane Wilson, the site CFO.

“What’s a 20-2 line? “ asked Patty.

“Oh, sorry. It’s a term we use to here to describe line financial metrics. The ’20’ stands for $20 million in sales and the ‘2’ stands for $2 million in profit.” Jane responded.

“Thanks,” said Patty.

“Oh, but I guess we would have to call them 18.4 -1.84 lines now that the productivity and profit are down by 8%.” Jane sarcastically said as she glared at Fred.

At this comment, Fred lost his cool, he slammed his fist on the table and shouted at Jane. “It isn’t 8%, its only 5% and I told you it’s just a random fluctuation,” he fumed.

Is the lost profit just a random fluctuation? If not, what is the cause? And how are Patty and Rob doing?

Stayed tuned for the latest.

Patty Gets Her Man

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Patty and Rob went to balance the line. They found that this very complex board had 1350 passives, 24 simple ICs (SICs) and nine complex ICs. Currently the chipshooter (CS) is placing all the passives and nine of the SICs.

The flexible placer (FP) is placing the nine complex ICs and 15 SICs. The placement rate for the chip shooter is 60,000/hr. for passives and 3,000/hr. for SICs. The CS cannot place CICs. The FP places complex ICs at 4,000/hr. and passives and SICs at 8,000/hr.

To balance a line, Rob and Patty start by seeing how long it will take the CS to place all of the passives and the FP to place all of the SICs and CICs.

For the CS to place all of the passives

timeCS = 1350 passives/60K passives/hr. = 0.01945 hr. = 81 sec.

The time FP takes to place all of the SICs and CICs is

timeFP = 24 SICs/8K SICs/hr   + 9 CICs/4K CICs/hr = 0.003 hrs + 0.00225 hrs = 18.1 seconds

Since the FP is waiting for the CS, Patty and Rob should move passives to the FP. They will determine the number of passives, x, to move to the FP by equalizing the CS and FP times

tCS = (1350-x) passives/60K passives/hr  = x passives/8K/hr + 18.1 secs/3600 sec/hour

Solving for x:

(1350-x)/60,000 = x/8,000 +18.1/3600

1350 – x = 7.5 x + 301.667

8.5 x = 1048.333

x = 123.33

In other words, 123 passives go to FP (the reason Patty and Rob round down to 123 is due to the much faster placement speed for the CS).

So Patty and Rob moved to 123 passives to the flexible placer.  Each machine’s time should be about the same now.  They performed the following calculation to check their results

tCS = (1350-123)/60,000 = 0.02045 hrs = 73.62 sec.

tFP = 18.1/3600 + 123/8000 = 0.02043 hrs = 73.45 sec.

Patty and Rob then went to the line to physically move the passive feeders to the FP.  They then measured the placement time of the both the CS and FP and found them to be 73.4 and 73.5 sec., respectively, quite close to their calculations.

A meeting was held to discuss the results and the tremendous productivity improvement (81 vs 73.5 second cycle time, an (81-73.5)/81 = 9.26 % improvement.)  Everyone at AJAX was pleased (maybe not Charlie!) and felt the experience was one of great learning.

At the end of the meeting Patty and Rob had a brief chat.

“Patty, I really appreciate all of your help,” said Rob said.

“Don’t forget The Professor. I don’t think I could have handled Charlie without him,” responded Patty.

“Anyway, to show my gratitude, will you allow me to take you to dinner?” asked Rob.

Finding Your ‘Herbie’

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“Your chipshooter is “the Herbie” in your process…, ” The Professor continued.

“That’s it!” a confident voice boomed from the back of the room.

“Who’s that?” Patty asked Rob.

“That’s Chris Conrad, our general manger. He’s a pretty sharp guy.”

Chris continued, “I remember “Herbie” from reading The Goal when I was at Tuck in the 1980s. Herbie was a chubby boy scout, during a hike, he held up all of the scout troop because he was loaded down carrying all of the soda. Finally the scouts realized that they had to help Herbie to make good time in the hike.   My professor assigned us problems to find where there is a constraint in a process. He even called it, ‘Finding the Herbie in the process’.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you’re  gonna take work off them chipshooters are ya?” Charlie impatiently inquired?

“No, the chipshooters will be working just as hard,” The Professor calmly replied.

“How can this be?”asked Charlie in disbelief.

“I made some calculations,” responded The Professor.  “In them, I estimate that if you move passives from the chipshooter to the flexible placer, both machines will have a cycle time of about 73 seconds. Your productivity will increase by about 10%. The chipshooter will be working full time, but the flexible placer will not be waiting for it.”

“Wow,” chimed in Chris, “Our CFO, Tom Stevens, will be thrilled … as am I.”

“Your increase in profit may actually be more than 15 percent,” The Professor added.

The Professor went on, “My calculations were only estimates,  Patty knows how to balance a line.  Give her the exact metrics and she can calculate the actual minimum cycle time. Patty, can you do this?”

“Sure thing Professor,” responded Patty.

Patty and the AJAX team, led by Rob, went off to perform some calculations. Stay tuned to see the results and how they got them.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

‘The Goal’ of Line Balancing

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The day of the line balancing telecom with AJAX had arrived and Patty was nervous. She had a feeling that the meeting might be contentious.

She felt some relief that The Professor would be teleconing in. The Professor had asked Patty to request a brief tour to measure the chipshooter and flexible placer placement times on one of the lines.

Patty arrived at AJAX an hour before the telecon. Rob took her for the tour. After the tour Patty and Rob went to the meeting room. While they were setting the computer projector and telecom equipment up, the attendees started to arrive. Patty had agreed to give a short presentation on the importance of line balancing, to kick things off. Rob had already told her that Charlie, the lead senior engineer, would be a hard sell.

After everyone had arrived and Patty had called The Professor, she began her brief presentation on line balancing. AJAX has three similar assembly lines each with a $2 million Pinnacle ultra high speed chipshooter and one of Pinnacle’s top of the line flexible placers.

On her tour, Patty measured the placement time for the chipshooter at 81 seconds and the flexible placer at 18 seconds. Patty mentioned in her presentation that for maximum productivity the chipshooter and flexible placer should each take the same amount of time. Upon hearing this comment, Charlie hit the roof.

“Let me tell you something about running a manufacturing facility, little girl,” Charlie fumed at Patty. “When I bought them three $2 million chipshooters, I promised Tom Stevens that I would work them puppies to death. Everyone knows that to minimize costs you must use your expensive equipment the most, so I make sure every feeder is full on all them there chip shooters.”

Patty couldn’t tell whether she was more intimidated or annoyed, but was ready to speak when The Professor intervened.

“Charlie, have you read The Goal?” asked the Professor.

“The only ‘Goal’ I have is to down a few cold ones after I finish wit youse guys.” Charlie shot back.

Patty looked a Charlie’s ponderous beer gut and thought to herself, Now that is something I believe!

Was Charlie right? How does The Goal fit in? Will the meeting take a more productive turn? Who is Tom Stevens?

Stay tuned for the latest.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

The Professor at AJAX

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In contemplating the events that transpired in the nine months since The Professor’s last visit, Patty had to chuckle.  John, her boss, received ACME’s company-wide Manager of the Year Award. The citation accompanying the award read, “For Conspicuous Leadership, Creativity and Innovation in Tripling Assembly Line Uptime.”  John received a $25,000 cash award and a trip for two to Belize.  Right!

Well, at least John was grateful to her.  He called her into his office after he received the award and told her that the award should be hers; she thought it should really be The Professor’s.

Anyway, he put her in for a promotion and she got it.  She was five years ahead of her peers; since she had just received a promotion last year.  She was also getting along well with Pete and company morale was high, even in these tough times, as the company was doing very well financially.  Three months ago, she presented a paper at SMTAI on the work they did to triple their line uptime from 10 to 30+%.  It received the “Best Paper” award.  She had wanted the Professor to be a co-author, but he refused.  Pete, however, was pleased to accept a co-author opportunity.   She was told that, at 24, she was the youngest recipient of this award — by eight years.

Several months ago she was asked to give a presentation on this work at a local SMTA meeting.  At this meeting she met Rob, a peer at AJAX.  AJAX was a local company that performed dedicated electronics assembly for its parent company in the automobile industry.  Hence, AJAX wasn’t a competitor to ACME.  She had heard rumors that the senior managers from ACME and AJAX even played golf together and shared ideas on improving their companies.  Rob was really interested in Patty’s talk and seemed to “soak up” everything that she said.  She couldn’t help but sense that he was more than a little interested in her in other ways.  He had been one year ahead of her at Tech and they both remembered each other.  After Tech, Rob had gone to work in aerospace, but had recently been RIFFed.  He has only been at AJAX for a few months and appeared determined to make his mark at the company as soon as possible.

As Patty was daydreaming about all of these good events, she saw a new email arrive on her laptop.  It was from Rob.  Upon opening it, she read that Rob asked her to call.  Patty immediately picked up the phone.

“Hi Rob, it’s Patty. What’s up?”

“Hey, Patty, how about our Red Sox losing six in a row, after leading the league?” said Rob.

“I’m devastated,” replied Patty.  “However, I’m cautiously optimistic, because when The Professor was discussing statistics in a workshop I took, he mentioned that even if a team is winning 60% of it games, there is more than a 50% chance that the team will lose six in a row in a season … it is just the nature of statistics.”

“Well, I hope he’s right,” replied Rob.

“Patty, your talk at the local SMTA meeting was really great.  I went back to AJAX and measured our uptime, and it was only 15%.  By following the things your team at ACME has done, we are up to 32% uptime.  But, I still sense we are missing something.”

“How so?” Patty responded.

“Well,” Rob started, “I’ve read some of The Professor’s papers and books, and performed a few calculations. These calculations suggest that AJAX should be able to produce at least 20% more product than we do.”

Hmmm, Patty murmured. “It sounds like your assembly lines may not be line balanced. Have you checked to see it they are?”

“How do we do that?” Rob queried.

“Well, I did it for ACME after attending The Professor’s workshop at last year’s SMTAI,” replied Patty.

“Could you help me do it at AJAX?” pleaded Rob.

“Gee, Rob, I don’t want to goof anything up at AJAX,” Patty said thoughtfully. “Why don’t I call and see if The Professor can help? You can check with your manager and see if involving The Professor is OK on AJAX’s end.”

Patty got The Professor on her first call.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t come, but suggested he could teleconference with her and Rob and develop a plan to audit AJAX’s line balancing. At Patty’s insistence, The Professor agreed to teleconference in to the meeting that Rob and she planned to kick off the audit. Patty felt it was important to have The Professor’s credibility to legitimize the audit.

Later, Patty had received a summons to the general manager’s office.  She was very nervous, but the GM put her at ease.  He told her that he and the AJAX GM were golfing buddies and he had heard that she was asked to help Rob.  He then went on to say that it was great that she was helping Rob as he always wanted the AJAX GM to “owe him one.”  The GM then congratulated her on her recent promotion and finished by saying: “Patty, the future of ACME is in the hands of young, bright, curious and hardworking folks like you. I sleep a little better at night knowing you are on my team!”

Will AJAX’s lines be balanced?  What will the characters at AJAX be like?  Will there be a Pete there?  Will Rob make a move on Patty? Stay tuned for the latest in the adventures of The Professor and his protégés.