Managing Automation - January 2009 - (Page 22) DEEPDIVE business drivers ma poll design ready for manufacturing. The bidsoftware that have reduced the time it takes ding process actually took twice as long as the company to generate a complete quote — the manufacturing process in most cases. including 3D drawings — from a month to as Often, says Engineering Manager Sukhbir short as two hours. The RuleStream Corp. Singh, a dealer would pass along incomplete, software, based on a knowledge base and inaccurate specifications, forcing the Fresno rules engine, allows Fresno Valves to define Valves engineering department to redo bids rules around the types of irrigation systems and drawings. the company typically produces. That manual approach to bidding and costWith those rules defined in the system, ing projects, though inefficient, served Fres- Commodity prices began rising so fast that, by no Valves well enough the time the company got a bid out the door, until a couple of years precious profit margin had often already been lost. ago, when business conditions began to change in two importhe company’s salespeople can automatically tant ways. First, customers, interested in generate complete quotes, including Solidputting their capital to work sooner, startWorks 3D drawings, after entering informaed demanding quicker turnaround times. tion about the project. The tool validates that And, second, commodity prices began rising the information entered makes sense, and it so fast that, by the time the company got a retrieves material cost information from the bid out the door, precious profit margin had latest purchase orders the company has isoften already been lost. sued, ensuring that costs and project pricing Fresno Valves’ answer was to implement are based on true, up-to-date material costs. new pricing and estimating processes and Now, Singh says, the company’s salespeople can generate a full quote in just a few minutes. As a result, revenue in the company’s Gate Division has grown fourfold over the past four years, he says. “There’s no doubt this has helped make us more agile,” Singh says. “We’re getting FORMAL STRATEGIES LAG MOUNTING good reviews from our customers and dealers BUSINESS PRESSURES because we’re able to be more responsive. Q: How would you characterize your company’s involvement with And we don’t lose money on jobs.” the idea of agility? CLOSING THE LOOP An informal initiative without clear goals and objectives: 32.6% A formal business strategy with the backing of top management: 28.3% A strategy that individual business units are pursuing: 26.1% It is part of other programs such as lean and Six Sigma: 10.9% Don’t know: 2.2% agility Q: How important are key business issues in driving your company’s need to become more agile? Global competitive pressures: 10.6% 23.4% 40.4% 72.3% 48.9% Cost pressures: 4.3% Increasing customer 8.5% demands: 27.7% 63.8% Low = Medium = High = Percentages may have been rounded and may not equal 100%. Of course, improving agility is about more than just gaining accurate, real-time visibility. You also must be able to act quickly on what you learn about things like rapidly changing costs and demand. That’s why manufacturers are increasingly forging new, accelerated processes and workflows that more tightly link functions such as demand planning and production scheduling. Take electronic component manufacturer Jabil Circuit Inc. as an example. Until fairly recently, the company frequently found itself weighed down with unwanted inventory because it tended to accept customers’ demand forecasts at face value, and then unquestioningly hand those forecasts off to manufacturing for scheduling. The problem, says Andy Joyner, program manager in Jabil’s supply chain management group, was that, increasingly, customer forecasts were inaccurate. “Electronic components markets change so rapidly that it was not unusual for customers’ forecasts to be off by 50%,” Joyner says. “In one case, we had to shut down the line for several ma January 22 2009
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