Cellular Manufacturing
Dramatically Reduced Lead-Times
A cell is defined as:
A group of dissimilar machinery grouped together with people,
material and everything else required to make a particular product.
In 2000, Webex implemented a focus cell factory for aluminum
dead shafts idlers. It took a half of a year of planning, involving
many Webex team members, before this implementation date. The goal
was to drastically reduce our product lead-times and improve service
to our customers. The general idea was to change the manufacturing
to a "pull" system by gathering the resources (people/machines)
and arranging them together to get the most efficient product output,
generate a core team and cross-train the team members on the different
machines and organize the appropriate support staff.
All of our hard work has paid off.
The cell has a dedicated customer support associate that handles
the orders, which has improved our flexibility and response to our
customers. We blew away the industry standard of three-week delivery
dates. Webex now consistently delivers aluminum dead shaft idler
rolls in 5-10 days!
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