If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”
– Lawrence J. Peter 1977

Sounds simple enough.  If you use GPS, you have turn by turn directions that will take you from point A to point B.  But if you don’t plan well enough or your GPS is out of date, even when think you’re sure of where you’re headed, you don’t always end up where you expected.

I see a lot of businesses that know that they need to improve “where they are”.  They’re pretty sure they know “where they should be” but lack experience driving the bus.  What they need is a business GPS!  Let’s simplify the examples.  If you don’t have the expertise, you call a doctor when you’re sick, a plumber when your pipes are leaking or a carpenter when you need some remodeling done.  How many projects does your business take on internally without the right help?  Without having that Business GPS?  Make sure you have the right help getting to your destination.

A business example, where are we going?
A business in the Aerospace Industry was rapidly growing and needed to improve its material planning.  Some purchased and manufactured components were taking way too long to get in the door or off the shop floor.  They knew where they were, but were falling further behind every day.  They knew they needed to get to a point where they could trust their material plans and get material in the door or out of the shop faster.  They also needed a good shop floor schedule (with real dates) to share weekly with their parent organization.

How to get there?
They had good people on staff.  They had CloudSuite Industrial (SyteLine) as an ERP System.  They had other great pieces of technology like Infor CPQ (Configure, Price, and Quote) and APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) but needed help with the roadmap and driving the bus to improve processes and take advantage of that technology.  We quickly assembled a team that had driven that route before.  That team knew where the potholes were.  Together we were able to lay out a road map.  We had the short, medium and long range goals identified and then put the plan together to get there.   We laid out the major destinations, the size of the bus, how much gas it would take to get there and how many people were on the bus.

Arriving at your destination?
There are always roadblocks to go around, detours that were unexpected,  but I love it when a plan comes together!   Our road map had numerous stops on our journey.  We had numerous destinations.  We tackled some areas that provided immediate improvements in inventory and production flow.  We put separate “Side Trip” projects in place that improved quality for the manufacturing process, like configuration.  Once we reached our destinations and were able to gather the appropriate metrics we saw we were able to make some huge improvements.

• Standardized Engineering processes across the company
• Standardized Engineering releases to manufacturing and streamlined those processes
• Eliminated the need for the shop floor to schedule their areas by adding a single scheduling to the process
• Reduced the number of open jobs on the shop floor by 60%
• Improved lead time accuracy in the system to 95%+
• Improved BOM Accuracy and development speed by using the configurator for key assemblies
• Improved inventory accuracy to 98%+
• Shop Floor Schedules are trusted and followed by manufacturing
• Manufacturing status and overall data visibility/trust has improved tremendously

Are you satisfied with where you are?  Do you have technology and tools that are underutilized?  Do you have processes that are in need of improvement?  Do you need some help getting focused and getting some traction?  That’s how we live our lives.  Helping businesses get to their destinations.  We can help at all levels in the journey.  We can help identify the destination(s), help you understand the scope, schedule and resources needed to get there and even drive the bus if necessary.  With over 30 years of manufacturing, technology and business experience, let our tremendous team of professionals help you reach your goals and arrive at your destination!

Contact us today!