Lean Manufacturing
Lean is one of the most popular and successful approaches to manufacturing improvement in use today. We can compliment your team from a very detailed level, such as working out how to improve the performance of a particular item of machinery, right up to the more strategic level tasks, such as ranking the business merits of all the current Lean projects under consideration.
Sometimes a Lean implementation takes a while to produce results, or the team is too busy on day-to-day activities. We can help by focussing effort and adding resources to the most important project.
Six Sigma
We consider the Six Sigma concepts for reducing defects, and more broadly the DMAIC approach to be valid methodologies for business improvement. If you have a Six Sigma program in place, we can compliment your team by adding a fresh set of eyes to help with any of your DMAIC steps.
Theory of Constraints
We consider the Theory of Constraints to be an excellent tool to connect the global goal of the business with setting of project priorities. It is complimentary to both the Lean and Six Sigma approaches.
We often start our projects by clearly identifying and working on the bottleneck process, as per the TOC methodology.
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How are you different from other consultants ?
We understand three key interlinked aspects of manufacturing: the business view, the performance of the machinery, and the design of the product. Understanding all three aspects both individually and collectively gives us insight as to what opportunities exist, and then how to implement significant changes
By contrast, management consultants tend to overlook hardware possibilities, machinery suppliers tend to overlook process implications, and product designers tend to overlook production factors.
We are not restricted to a single ideology, or a particular software package or hardware product to generate a solution path.
We focus on making changes and measuring improvements, with formal reporting and documentation to be a tool not an end in itself.
How do you charge ?
We only take on projects that will be beneficial for all concerned, and we explore with you the likely impact we will have on your business before we start. We charge one of four ways (1) time based rates, (2) fixed price for a fixed scope, (3) hat at the door, or (4) reward based.
Our preference is for reward based as this puts our remuneration on par with our results.
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Factory goals
Capacity – Improve our production rate
Lead times – Reduce our delivery time
Quality – Improve the quality of our goods
Inventory – Reduce the amount of stock & WIP
Waste – Reduce waste or that extra shift
Chaos - Stop the chaos and expediting Visibility – See how is our factory running now
Product goals
Profitability – Understand profit per product
Performance – Engineer to work as intended
Government assistance
We suggest you consider our services in conjunction with either federal or state programs. Government bodies can be contacted directly, or alternatively there are many companies specialising in working through the grants process.
We have already provided services as part of various Australian government schemes.
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