Agile Manufacturing

Agile Manufacturing

• Agility is the ability to thrive and prosper in an environment of constant

and unpredictable change .

• Agility is not only to accommodate change but to relish the opportunities

inherent within a turbulent environment.
•
• Everything is changing very fast and unpredictably. The market requires
low volume, high quality, custom and specific products. These products
have very short life-cycles and very short development and production
lead times are required.

• An agile approach to manufacturing faces the reality that we must serve

customers with small quantities of custom designed parts with perfect
quality, 100% on-time delivery, and at very low cost.

• To approach agile manufacturing requires that the company already be

world class and using lean manufacturing methods.
• Manufacturing industry is on the verge of a
major paradigm shift. This shift will take us
away from mass production, way beyond lean
manufacturing, into a world of Agile
Manufacturing.
Development of manufacturing systems
Agility and process Types
 AGILE MANUFACTURING
• Agile manufacturing is a term applied to an organization that has
created the processes, tools, and training to enable it to respond
quickly to customer needs and market changes while still controlling
costs and quality.

• Agile manufacturing is seen as the next step after Lean

manufacturing in the evolution of production methodology.
 What is Agile Manufacturing?
• Agile manufacturing is a method for
manufacturing which combine our
organization, people and technology into an
integrated and coordinated whole to gain
competitive advantage.
• Indicates ability to exploit a fundamental
resource- knowledge
 Market Forces and Agility

• Intensifying competition
• Fragmentation of mass markets into niche market
• Cooperative business relationships- virtual organisation
• Changing customer expectations
• Increasing Social Pressures
 Principles of Agile:
1. Highest priority is customer satisfaction
2. Welcome changing requirements
3. Flexibility
4. Lead time
5. High product quality levels
6.Modular product design
7. IT
8. Corporate partners
9.Knowledge Culture
 Why do we need to be agile
• Global Competition is intensifying.
• Mass markets are fragmenting into niche markets.
• Cooperation among companies is becoming
necessary, including companies who are in direct
competition with each other.
 Why do we need to be agile cont:
• Customers are expecting:
1. Low volume products
2. High quality products
3. Custom products
• Very short product life-cycles, development time,
and production lead times are required.
• Customers want to be treated as individuals- Mass
– Customisation.
 Keys to agility and flexibility
• To determine customer needs quickly and continuously
reposition the company against it’s competitors.
• To design things quickly based on those individual needs.
• To put them into full scale, quality, production quickly.
• To respond to changing volumes and mix quickly.
• To respond to a crisis quickly.
 DIFFERENCE
LEAN AGILE
-Focus on factory operations -Scope is enterprise wide
 An agile definition of the product

• Take into account all the dimensions

• The Product Owner is not superman

Start from the goal (the « why »)

Subordinate the perimeter to this « why »

 Principles of agile manufacturing

Lean manufacturing Agile manufacturing

1.Minimize wastes 1.Enrich the customer

2.Perfect first-time quality 2.Co-operate to enhance

competitiveness

3.Flexibles production lines 3.Organize to master change

4.Continous improvement 4.Leverage the impact of people and

information
 Key Elements

• There are four key elements for agile

manufacturing:
 Modular Product Design -designing
products in a modular fashion that enables
them to serve as platforms for fast and
easy variation.
 Information Technology -automating the
rapid dissemination of information
throughout the company to enable
lightning fast response to orders.
 Corporate Partners-creating virtual short-
term alliances with other companies that
enable improved time-to-market for
selected product segments.
 Knowledge Culture- investing in employee
training to achieve a culture that supports
rapid change and ongoing adaptation.
 Dimensions of Agile manufacturing

Four dimensions:
(i) value-based Pricing Strategies that enrich customers
(ii) co-operation that enhances competitiveness
(iii) organizational mastery of change and uncertainty
(iv ) Investments That Leverage the impact of people and information
This has two elements:
(i)Development of internal capability.
For example , a lead-time reduction target may be achieved through product
redesign, using JIT or the improvement of an MRP system leading to
capabilities in design, factory-fl ̄oor organization.
(ii)Ability to configure the company’s assets.
This may depend on the use of technology, flexible organization, or the
reliance on shifting alliances, Created And Dissolved According To Market
needs.
Enablers of agile manufacturing
The Agile Wheel

• Agile Strategy-involving the processes

for understanding the firm’s situations
within its sectors, committing to agile
strategy, aligning it to a fast moving
market, and communicating and
deploying it effectively.
• Agile processes-the provision of
actual facilities and processes to allow
agile functioning in an organization.
• Agile Linkages-intensively working
with and learning from others outside
the company, specially customers and
suppliers.
• Agile people-developing a flexible
and multi-skilled workforce, creating
a culture which allow a initiative and
creativity to thrive through the
organization.
 Comparison between lean & agile and mass &
agile
Lean manufacturing Agile manufacturing Mass Agile
1.Enhancement of mass 1.Emphasis on mass manufacturing manufacturing
production customization 1.Standardized 1.Customized
2.Flexible production of 2.Greater flexibility for products products
product variety customized products 2.Long marker 2.Short life
3.Focus on factory 3.Scope is enterprise wide life expected
operations 3.Produce to 3.Produce to
4.Emphasis on supplier 4.Formation of virtual forecast order
management enterprises 4.Low 4.High
5.Emphasis on efficient 5.Emphasis on thriving in information information
use of resources. environment marked by content content
continuous unpredicted 5.Single time 5.Continuous
changes sales relationships
6.Relies on smooth 6.Acknoeledges and 6.Pricing by 6.Pricing by
production schedule. attempts to be responsive production customer value
to change cost
 Differences between lean & agile

• Lean manufacturing focuses on reducing costs, allowing companies

greater price flexibility. Agile manufacturing focuses on responding quickly
to unexpected customer requests, allowing companies to capitalize on the
highest possible number of sales opportunities.
• Production configuration for agile manufacturing uses fewer people,
relying more on automation and modular design than lean manufacturing,
which relies heavily on people.
• Regarding inventory, lean manufacturing requires a higher inventory of
smaller parts, while agile manufacturing requires a lower inventory due to
modular design. The modular design also makes agile manufacturing
systems more ready to adapt to customization requests.
 The drivers of agility

• Automation and price/cost consideration

• Widening customer choice and expectation

• Competing priorities

• Integration and proactivity

 The core concepts of agile
manufacturing
• Core competence management
• Virtual enterprise
• Capability for re-configuration
• Knowledge-driven enterprise
 Interdisciplinary Design
Interdisciplinary design will form the basis of
designing Agile Manufacturing systems in the new
knowledge intensive era.

Interdisciplinary design is one of the most

important challenges that managers and systems
designers and integrators will face in the years
ahead. It leads us to new approaches and new ways
of working and of thinking.
 Interdisciplinary Design
To successfully adopt an interdisciplinary design
method, we need to:
• Challenge our accepted design strategies and
develop new and better approaches.
• Question our established and cherished beliefs and
theories, and develop new ones to replace those that
know longer have any validity.
 Interdisciplinary Design
• Consider how we address organization, people and
technology, and other issues in the design of manufacturing
systems, so we can have systems that are better for
performance, better for the environment, and better for the
people.
• Go beyond the automation paradigm of the industrial era, to
use technology in a way that makes human skill, knowledge,
and intelligence more effective and productive, and that
allows us to tap into the creativity and talent of all our people.
 Transition to Agile
manufacturing?
• Make the break with the things that are wrong
with the way we do things today.
• Examine and define the underlying conceptual
framework on which Agile Manufacturing
enterprises will be built.
 Making the transition cont.

• Explore and understand the nature of the mass

production paradigm and the nature of the cultural
and methodological difficulties involved in the
transition to Agile Manufacturing.

• Define a methodology for designing a 21st century

manufacturing enterprise.
 Real world example:
• The Industry: Japanese car makers
• The goal: To produce the three day car,
(three days from customer order for a
customized car to dealer delivery).
 Real world ex. Cont.
The Challenges:
• The challenges:
1. Break dependency on scale and economies of scale
(reducing setup costs in key).
2. Produce vehicles in low volumes at a reasonable cost.
3. Guarantee the three day car.
4. Replace large centralized with distributed clusters of
mini-assembly plants located near customers.
5. Be able to reconfigure components in many different
ways.
 Real world ex. Cont.
The Challenges:
1. Make work stimulating.
2. Turn the customer into a “prosumer,” an ugly neologism that
means proactive something; the idea is that the customer
will take an active role in the product design by, for example,
configuring options at a computer in a dealer
showroom.(Levis is doing it so is Pepe)
3. Streamline ordering systems and establish close
relationships with suppliers.
4. Manage the massive volumes of data generated by the
production system so as to be able to analyze that data
quickly and agilely.