True32 Flow Manufacturing – Book

Description

When we start a small or medium business, we become managers, whether we like it or not. We must manage all of our resources. Your employees will work under any system you set up. There will be little or no concern on the shop floor or in the office as to whether the best method is being used or whether the best results are being achieved, whether the material and motion of men are being optimized. You cannot bring in a group of new machines and expect them to produce an unending supply of money if your management systems are not in place and working beforehand. Our objective in this book is to supply the systems to make panel processing machinery work for you in the most efficient way possible (all illustrations are based on a manual system, CNC is not addressed in this book), but all the lessons we learn in the panel processing examples apply to any business that is made up of a series of dependent events (ie., you have to cut it before you can process it, you have to sand it before you can prime it, you have to print it before you can fold it, you have to lay the carpet pad before you can lay the carpet, etc.).

Simplicity is one of the foundations of any system, but the very nature of this simplicity leads to a level of complexity one can only describe as mind numbing. The only comparison I have would be a Christian conversion. Christianity hinges on one simple premise (Jesus Christ is who he said he was, Redeemer), but the simplicity of that statement is what most people trip over. Many of today’s cults (especially eastern religions) win followers because of the very complexity of their religious systems. These people think there can’t be eternal life available unless there are some really complex and difficult systems to follow. Like Christianity, True32 truly is elegant simplicity. If you fix the one thing (your Constraint), you will inevitably fix many other things as well. One thing can change everything.