Improving Flexibility in Manufacturing Using a Family Ordering System for Long Lead Time Component

• Main Author: Ooi, Chee Keong
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/382/1/549751_fk_2005_32_abstrak_je__dh_pdf_.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/382/

Most manufacturers face challenges from inaccurate forecast, regular plan changes, back log and capacity problems. As a result, their purchasers rely heavily on the material suppliers to provide greater flexibility in the event of production schedule changes. Oftentimes, manufacturers attempt to push material forecast risks to the material suppliers. In order to overcome the risks taken to achieve flexible manufacturing or supply chain management, this study will address the issues and methods to accommodate production schedule changes in a short time-frame. The literature review seems to indicate that little attention has been paid by researchers to solve the flexibility issue from the material handling point of view. Most of the researchers only focus on machine, routing, and process flexibility. Product and volume flexibility issues are rarely studied. This is mainly because manufacturing flexibility is very much dependent on a very good supply chain management from material vendors. The objective of this study is to introduce innovative ideas to improve the level of manufacturing flexibility by using a Family Ordering System (FOS) for long lead time parts. The study result has shown that the long lead time for unique parts are within the range of three to five percent of total parts order, and the cost of unique parts with long lead time is within zero to one percent. Therefore, by carrying the extra inventory of the unique parts which amount to a very small percentage of the total parts order in terms of long lead time and cost, the Family Ordering Method provides the improvement of manufacturing flexibility by ordering the long lead time parts based on family grouping methodology.