Global Manufacturing & Multi-Facility Operations with Lean Manufacturing

Global manufacturing firms without multi-facility support face communication challenges crucial to efficient and effective lean operations. Some centralization of corporate functions such as purchasing and accounting may work well, but other functions can be very location-specific. These may include materials inventories, production planning and scheduling, sales, product distribution, financial and operational analysis, and, in the case of foreign sites, currencies and conversions.

Information Empowers

Vital to keeping a manufacturing strategy lean – i.e., obtaining the highest level of productivity with a minimum of on-hand inventory and waste – is empowering workers up and down the line with the information necessary for robust decision-making. When multiple manufacturing plants are involved, the integrated data flow and how it is handled becomes even more important, particularly if one site is feeding another with partially manufactured parts. In effect, one plant becomes part of the supply chain for another.

Planning and Scheduling Together

In addition to accurate data input and securely controlling access so that one location does not affect another's data, visibility of pertinent data will yield optimal lean results. Making real-time information available to all sites simultaneously is a boon to keeping the manufacturing process as waste free as possible. For example, an order entered centrally that requires product from all sites should automatically be generated across locations so that planning and scheduling in the various plants can be coordinated simultaneously. Up-to-date schedules visible to all plants allow for more efficient scheduling of resources in any given plant.

Shared information may also provide insight to all plant managers on when to produce, when to import, which machines work well for the current objectives and which have drawbacks, etc. Taking advantage of the opportunity to learn a process from another, related plant can be invaluable to the overall organization.

Identifying Best Practices

If each manufacturing plant contributes complete data to a central database, overall reports and analysis on the health of the company and its processes are simple to construct. A robust overview for upper management can provide the feedback to individual plant managers that will allow for fine-tuning of production, identification of constraints for optimal production, and can indicate new areas of insight to build even more lean oriented manufacturing practices into the processes. If done properly, one plant can learn from another in real-time so that all are up-to-date with best practices.