{"id":3315,"date":"2024-01-30T03:26:39","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T03:26:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/?page_id=3315"},"modified":"2024-01-30T03:26:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T03:26:39","slug":"common-parts-schedule-application","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/?page_id=3315","title":{"rendered":"Common Parts Schedule Application"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Julian stood up when a tall woman entered the room. Before he had a chance to speak, she walked up to him and shook his hand, smiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you Julian? Tabitha Reyes, but call me Tabby \u2013 everyone does! You\u2019re here to interview me, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian blinked in surprise, but returned the handshake and managed a smile of his own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, that\u2019s right. I\u2019m from \u2018Big in Business\u2019 magazine. Everyone\u2019s talking about the difference you\u2019ve made here at Orbital Power Tools, and our readers would love to hear the story as you tell it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tabby nodded. \u201cRight, that\u2019s what the email said. I\u2019m in a bit of a rush this morning, I\u2019m afraid, so let\u2019s get started. Take a seat,\u201d she said and gestured to a couch and a couple of armchairs in one corner of the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she was sitting down Julian took a glance at his notes, so he was ready when Tabby turned to him enquiringly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOK, so, first question: what is this revolutionary thing you\u2019ve done here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tabby laughed. \u201cThat\u2019s your first question? You don\u2019t start small\u2026 but OK, I\u2019ll try to answer that.\u201d She thought for a moment, then leaned back in her chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI call my idea a \u2018Common Parts Schedule.\u2019 It\u2019s basically a way of making sure that jobs get finished on time and overheads are kept low, even when there are a lot of jobs needing the same parts. It also helps us to keep lead times stable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight, right\u2026\u201d Julian nodded. \u201cUh, could you maybe give us a bit of background on the situation? Like, what is it that made this necessary?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSure thing. Here at Orbital Power Tools \u2013 OPT, as the cool kids call it \u2013 we make power tools. Stop me if I\u2019m going too fast for you,\u201d Tabby grinned. \u201cWe make quite a variety of them, for various purposes, but most of them need\u2026 these.\u201d Tabby took a small metal object from her pocket and tossed it to Julian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian caught it and examined it curiously. \u201cIt looks like a shaft bearing of some sort. It\u2019s got ball-bearing raceways, and it\u2019s maybe\u2026 12mm in diameter. What is it for?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got a good eye, it is 12mm. It\u2019s a self-aligning ball bearing that reduces the rotational friction in our power tools. Anyway, most of our products have several of them. We get in the balls and so on and these bearings ourselves. Before I introduced the \u2018common parts schedule\u2019 we were making thousands of these bearings, and storing them for use later, but somehow, we kept finding that we had run out of the right bearing and urgent jobs had to wait for more to be produced. It was ridiculous!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian frowned. \u201cHow did that happen? I mean, if you made plenty then why weren\u2019t they available?\u201d It didn\u2019t make any sense!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFair question,\u201d Tabby nodded. \u201cTo answer it\u2026 well, you know we run a constraint schedule here, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Julian replied confidently. He\u2019d done some research before coming here. \u201cYou\u2019ve nominated a constraint, the armature assembly, and got everything working to support it, and so on. Standard Theory of Constraints stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tabby beamed at him. \u201cThat\u2019s right! Gold star for homework, Julian! Anyway, almost all our products require motors with various shaft, rotor, and stator sizes. And, our people, when assembling the motors got into the habit of just grabbing bearings from wherever was nearest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh\u2026\u201d Julian thought he was starting to understand. \u201cSo\u2026 some jobs that had gone through the armature assembly couldn\u2019t be finished, because they were missing these bearings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExactly. And because of that, we got a whole lot of problems. Our constraint is the motor armature production, and that runs just fine. For some of our jobs we hold prebuilt armatures, but most we build from scratch. The issue was our completion schedule kept falling apart. We couldn\u2019t predict which order jobs would get completed; we couldn\u2019t predict when they would be completed. Further, the place was full of half-completed motors which were shoved to one side waiting for the right bearings, and those bearings were in hot demand!\u201d Tabitha sighed and shook her head. \u201cIt was just a mess, Julian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHmm.\u201d Julian thought for a moment. \u201cThe obvious thing to do is to just reserve all parts for the job they\u2019re assigned to \u2013 do that for every job, and you\u2019re sure everything has the parts it needs. I\u2019m guessing that didn\u2019t work for some reason, though.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tabby shook her head again. \u201cNo, it didn\u2019t. We ended up with ridiculous situations, where there were urgent jobs on which we could make progress since we had the armatures, and there were bearings available, but we weren\u2019t allowed to use the bearings because they were intended for different jobs. We still had pallets of half-assembled tools clogging the place up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut, of course, you weren\u2019t happy with the bearings just being used for whichever motor was being worked on, either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDarn right, I wasn\u2019t!\u201d Tabby agreed. \u201cSometimes the bearings got taken for a job which was due later than the one which they\u2019d been \u2018stolen\u2019 from, meaning those jobs couldn\u2019t get done on time. That didn\u2019t look good to customers. Trying to avoid it also led to a storeroom full of the wrong bearings which I was talking about earlier. That was actually a fairly big investment in inventory, and you\u2019ve seen how small our assembly area is. That storeroom was taking up a lot of space, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, I understand,\u201d Julian said. \u201cMoney tied up in stock, and a big block of non-productive space to hold it all in. I\u2019ll bet the accountants hated it.\u201d He paused for a moment. \u201cWhich brings us back to your solution\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight, the common parts schedule. So, the first thing was to find out where bearings intended for the armatures we built, our constraint jobs, were being \u2018stolen\u2019 – the non-constraint prebuilt armature jobs were taking parts that were meant for jobs that had to go through the constraint. As long as that \u2018stealing\u2019 was going on, then our constraint schedule was just a joke, so we had to get on top of that straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian nodded again and scribbled a note to himself. He was recording this interview on his phone as well, of course, but reading a transcript might not trigger the same thoughts. \u201cAnd as a result of that, I\u2019m guessing you had to change some policies, too\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Tabby said, warming to her theme. \u201cNon-constraint jobs DID NOT use parts intended for constraint jobs. No exceptions, not even if \u2018it seemed like a really good idea, and the coffee shop bloke said it was OK\u2019!\u201d she laughed. \u201cSeriously, that was one of the big parts of it \u2013 we didn\u2019t care all that much about non-constraint jobs, but we came down like a ton of bricks on stealing bearings intended for jobs that would, or had, gone through armature production. Once we got everyone following that rule, half the battle was won.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUh-huh,\u201d Julian said, \u201cand what was the other half of the battle?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh.\u201d Tabby grimaced, and her happy mood seemed to change for a moment. \u201cWell, that bit wasn\u2019t so easy, actually. If we weren\u2019t allowing non-constraint jobs to \u2018steal\u2019 parts, then we had to keep a sort of pool of bearings available, so that we could keep all jobs flowing. Let\u2019s just say that the production of bearings, the mix, and the quantities caused some\u2026 enthusiastic discussions amongst the management team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julian looked up at her. \u201cCould you expand on that, please? Some of our readers are going to want to try this themselves, and if there\u2019s anything that might trip them up it would be good for them to know about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tabby sighed and looked uncomfortable. \u201cWell\u2026 OK, but this bit isn\u2019t for publication, OK? Just include it as speculation about how to implement it or something, all right? I don\u2019t want to call anyone out about this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSure,\u201d Julian agreed, \u201cwe do that all the time. Not a problem. So\u2026 you had some discussions…?\u201d He let his voice trail off enquiringly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d Tabby said reluctantly, \u201cwe did. There were two main issues, actually. The first one was from the accounting team. The price per unit for the bearings was noticeably lower if we purchased the input materials in big batches, and then produced bearings based on what we had on-hand, and the accounting team couldn\u2019t see why we should willingly pay more for parts we were certainly going to use anyway. Not only was this an issue for bearings but also for all the other inputs we purchased. Dealing with that required digging into the costs of what we were previously doing \u2013 storage costs for these huge piles of materials, expediting costs for jobs which were delayed because there were no bearings available, and so on. Eventually, I was able to prove that it would be cheaper to make smaller batches more frequently. Once I managed that, they changed their position quite happily, so credit where it\u2019s due: they were willing to listen to reason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight,\u201d Julian said. \u201cBut from how you said that, it doesn\u2019t sound like everyone was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cNo,\u201d Tabitha said. \u201cI don\u2019t really blame him, actually. However, the store manager did not want to reduce the stock levels. He kept on bringing up times when we\u2019d run out of something, and eventually, it got to the point where he didn\u2019t want to be responsible for part availability. Like I said, I don\u2019t actually blame him \u2013 if something went wrong it would be him taking the blame, and the less stock we carried the more risk he saw.\u201d She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. \u201cIt took a long time to get him to agree to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow did you manage that? I mean, if he wasn\u2019t being reasonable about it, then\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith four words,\u201d Tabby said, grinning again. \u201cParanoid-but-not-hysterical. Basically, I agreed with him that it was important to have security of supply and that it was wise to consider edge cases\u2026 but that it would be taking caution too far to consider things that only happened once, ten years ago, in a different branch\u2026 whatever far-fetched example that was bothering him. I used that exact phrasing, by the way \u2013 \u2018paranoid but not hysterical.\u2019 I think it actually made a big difference, because it implied that paranoia was reasonable and prudent, but nobody wants to think they\u2019re being hysterical, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight,\u201d Julian agreed. \u201cAnd that was all it took?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot exactly,\u201d Tabby admitted. \u201cI also had to agree that we would reduce stocks gradually and that if we started having problems due to lack of parts we would stop reducing until we could figure out how to prevent that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Julian looked back down at his notes. \u201cRight. That leads to something else I wanted to ask about, actually\u2026 how do you prevent running out of parts with this \u2018common parts schedule\u2019? Because even if you\u2019re being paranoid but not hysterical, you\u2019re still holding much lower stocks than you used to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cAh yes!\u201d Tabby said. \u201cThat\u2019s the other big thing that makes this work: a top-up system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCould you explain what you mean by that, please?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tabby waved a hand carelessly. \u201cIf you like, but you probably already know about it. It\u2019s not all that complicated: you have a small pool of the common parts you need, and whenever you release a job that will use some you also release an order to make a matching number of the common parts the job will use. You track the stock of common parts every day and from time to time halve any obvious excess. Plus, whatever \u2018paranoid but not hysterical\u2019 safety margin you\u2019re using.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2026 actually makes sense,\u201d Julian said slowly. \u201cThat\u2019s a good idea!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you,\u201d Tabby said. \u201cNow, I\u2019ve got another meeting coming up soon. Was there anything else you wanted to go over?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAh, yes,\u201d Julian said hastily. \u201cCould you quickly go over the benefits OPT has gained from implementing your common parts schedule?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSure,\u201d Tabby said and started ticking them off on her fingers. \u201cFirst thing: significant reduction in the number of jobs finished late because of part stealing. Second: low work-in-progress, so things move faster through the assembly area. Third: we can actually keep our constraint schedule intact, which means our lead times are much more predictable. Fourth: we rarely have to expedite the resupply of common parts. That\u2019s bearings originally, but since it\u2019s been working so well for them, we\u2019re adopting it for other common parts too. Oh, and I suppose there\u2019s also reduced inventory costs, so that\u2019s five.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight,\u201d Julian said and checked his notes again. \u201cI think that\u2019s about everything I had on my list. Any words of wisdom for anyone thinking about trying this themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHmm\u2026\u201d Tabby looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. \u201cWell, you really need to be running a constraint schedule to get the most out of it, which is a good idea anyway, of course, but if that\u2019s not in place already then you should do that first. And be prepared for debate about the proper level of stock to maintain \u2013 you\u2019ll probably have to experiment with that a bit to find the right level, too, so you won\u2019t maximise the benefits straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood advice!\u201d Julian stood up to leave. \u201cThanks for your time, uh, Tabby. Once the article is ready, we\u2019ll send you a draft for approval. Probably sometime next week, so we can publish it next month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExcellent! All right, come with me, Julian, and I\u2019ll introduce you to Terry. He\u2019s the production manager, and he\u2019ll give you a tour of the plant and let you see the common parts schedule in practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they made their way to see the production manager, Julian was already planning his article mentally. Tabitha\u2019s ideas had made a big difference at OPT, and it sounded like they would work in lots of other businesses too. It would be interesting to see how other businesses implemented them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julian stood up when a tall woman entered the room. Before he had a chance to speak, she walked up to him and shook his hand, smiling. \u201cAre you Julian? Tabitha Reyes, but call me Tabby \u2013 everyone does! You\u2019re here to interview me, right?\u201d Julian blinked in surprise, but returned the handshake and managed …<\/p>\n

Common Parts Schedule Application<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3315","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3328,"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3315\/revisions\/3328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keypractices.viagointernational.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}