All I Need To Know About Manufacturing I Learned In Joe’s Garage By William B. Miller, Vicki L. Schenk

Report

1. The workers were issued envelopes containing Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering drawings.
a) Ralph observed certain inconsistencies between the two sets of drawings.
b) The two departments that were responsible for producing the drawings do not communicate with each other. The Engineering department does not design for manufacturing. It seems that efficiency and costs are not considered in the design phase.

2) By buying lumber cut to length he would have cut production time, waste, labor and costs related with tooling. Less space would have been required. It is also likely that the quality of the material …show more content…

The drills were not used at all while the lumber was cut, then all six were used for building the shelves. For the last phase, the drills are not used much. The work is planned in such a way that the breakdown of one drill can have a significant impact.
a) Joe’s operation was a high lead-time high inventory one. More effort is needed to organize and maintain a high inventory – he needs somebody to look after his lumber and one team does nothing but cut lumber, while a rent-a-cop records how much is used and by who.The high lead times have as a consequence high inventories, and require significant resources for tracking work in progress, planning and controlling. The artificially larger size of the operation determines administrative complexity which only generates costs but adds no value. A higher complexity generates errors and the reaction is to increase complexity, a vicious circle. The workers are under constant pressure and instead of a smooth production flow there is disorganization & crisis management.

7. The root cause of the quality problems with the countersunk holes discovered by the confrontational inspector is the lack of information in the drawings – a design flaw. The countersink depth is not specified. Also, the inspection standards are not specified. The drawings can be interpreted in more than one way and different people may have different