Implementing a frozen schedule and MPS processes in the 3D Printing industry

The customer

The customer is an expert in additive manufacturing located in Belgium. It is a fast growing company in the 3D Printing industry. The company engineers, manufactures and sells 3D printers, 3D printing materials, 3D scanners, and offers a 3D printing service.

The project focused on the printing of 3D materials for the medical industry. The majority of the volume is MTO related, for which the engineering and the production are customer specific, with a high need for qualitative design and accurate execution according to the technical drawings.

The challenge

After growing in market share, there was a need to develop a more robust supply chain with more predictable lead times and consistent service levels. Production management expertise, technical and lean experts were hired. Triggered by a value stream mapping activity, the need to review the planning process was identified.

In a first instance, the company wanted to validate the assumption that there was a big opportunity in streamlining the planning activities.

Allics assessed the current planning practices and defined opportunities in reducing planned lead times, increasing the feasibility of the plan and visualizing the planned service level and capacity utilization.

The customer says: “We were not looking for IT systems expertise, neither for endless process mapping or lists of theoretical recommendations, but for a partner who could understand the possibilities of the in-house built system well enough, understand the connection between planning and production and could change with us how the system was used, the process and the communication was done. We wanted to drive the process towards ensuring good service level, a stable production process, and more predictability”.

The solution

In the past the company tried to meet service levels by increasing promised lead times. In order to break that trend, and after a pragmatic assessment of the processes, Allics proposed to work on the following three challenges:

1. Drastically shorten lead times
2. Create a stable production plan
3. Make projected service levels, projected lead times and projected capacity utilization visible

Following the mantra ”change the world, start with yourself…” we decided to stabilize and connect the internal processes, aiming to decrease lead times. We made agreements on maintaining a frozen schedule in the short term requiring a formal commitment from production.

The planning horizons

Planners installed an MPS horizon in which capacities and service levels were managed. The already existing MPS meeting was aligned with the updated process and adapted views from available tools.

Reduced lead times

The focus was on improving the flow of products from one internal operation to the next. This drastically reduced WIP. The assumed lead times were assessed and reduced wherever possible in agreement with experts in production and the continuous improvement teams. Through reducing the planned lead times, ’hidden issues’ came to the surface allowing the organization to also work on these.

Visibility on the floor

We intensified the connection between production and planning by making a stable production plan for the upcoming week and visualize the status of the production versus plan on the production floor. This made deviations versus plan transparent for the entire organization, leading to incremental improvements to the plan week by week. Next to improvements in the planning area, many other opportunities became as well visible as well. Customer service, logistics, engineering, file preparation are all areas where improvements were identified and realized.

Align in the MPS meeting

We adapted the already existing weekly MPS meeting, defining visuals of projected service level, projected capacity utilization and projected lead times. This allowed the team to consider different scenarios when tackling specific challenges.

Win-win Subcontractors reduced lead times and service levels

Soon after the internal changes, the collaboration with the main subcontractors was intensified. Thanks to the leveled and stable plan that was agreed on upfront, the subcontractor was able to drastically reduce lead times, increase their service levels, improve their capacity utilization and reduced their WIP.

The results

As a result service level improved by 35%, production lead time of the main volume items was reduced by 40% in only a few months time (between October 2020 and February 2021). The customer reflects: “the whole initiative has increased the robustness of our supply chain, without major investments in new planning tools or expensive shopfloor systems. We were able to do major improvements in a sustainable way by better using our already-existing tools and people. The motor of the improvements lied in our own organization, we just needed an external eye to challenge the model we had become used to.“