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How to Design Office Cells to Reduce Lead Times for Custom Products
March 14, 2012
Engineering Centers Building
Madison, Wis.
When it comes to continuous improvement initiatives, most manufacturing companies primarily target opportunities on the shop floor. However, office operations such as quoting, design, and order processing could present a huge opportunity for your business to reduce lead times and grow market share.
Companies offering high-mix, low-volume or custom-engineered products spend significant time and resources in processing quotes, finalizing engineering designs, establishing bill of materials, and purchasing critical components. The result: long lead times, missed opportunities in quoting, delays in order processing, engineering changes, expediting, and high costs. Restructuring your operations into office cells could lead to significant improvements in these areas. Over the past two decades, the Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) Center in collaboration with its member companies has developed several tools, methodologies and principles to design office cells specifically for high-mix or-custom engineered products.
Join us for this one day workshop to learn how to redesign quoting processes to improve order capture rate, streamline order processing to reduce hand-offs and release orders to the shop floor quicker. Learn about results from cell implementations that have led to over 80% reduction in lead times, 50% improvements in order capture rate, manifold improvements in quality and on-time delivery, and 15-20% reduction in costs.
What you will learn:
- Sizing the opportunity: Tracking lead times and identifying waste in office operations
- The starting point: Focused Target Market Segment – the nucleus of an office cell
- Designing the cell: Streamline office operations to reduce hand-offs and reduce lead times
- Addressing challenges: Engineering changes, inaccurate information, waiting for approvals
- Planning for the cell: Staffing, capacity and lead times
- Financial justification: Costs and benefits of the cell implementation
Your Facilitator: Ananth Krishnamurthy
Ananth Krishnamurthy is the Director of the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing and serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has an M.S. and Ph.D. from UW-Madison.
Involved with the QRM Center for a decade, he has conducted numerous training events in the United States and Europe earning him worldwide recognition as an expert in the theory and practice of QRM.
Krishnamurthy has consulted for Alcoa, Rockwell Automation, Ingersoll, Johnson Controls, John Deere and Trek Bicycle. He has authored various publications in international journals, and he is a senior member of several professional organizations.
Prior to returning to UW-Madison, Krishnamurthy was an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was awarded the Engineering Excellence in Education Award for 2007.
Complete event brochure for download (PDF)
Registration
To register call us at 608-262-4709, fill out this registration form and fax it to 608-265-4017 or register right now online.
Fees
$295 (QRM member firms may enroll up to five people at $175 each)
Lodging
Call us if you need lodging recommendations.