China Manufacturing Improvement Blog

Standard work may be the most universal term in lean manufacturing, but it’s also one of the most important. It’s the basis for continuous improvement and gives operators a way to share information easily, train employees, and sets a standard from which to work. 

With all the buzz about manufacturing moving to Vietnam, people tend to lose sight of the fundamental truths when it comes to labor productivity and production management. At CMC, we've heard several manufacturing managers comment that "Five workers in Vietnam are needed to do what gets done in China by three workers." However, we believe there is another way to look at it.

We wrote a few weeks ago about the most common types of internal failures in manufacturing, their impact for the manufacturer, and how simple software can be used as a preventive measure. Manufacturing managers tend to ask the same question on this topic: "How can this new approach help cut costs?" 

We'll be covering this question in our blog post today.

If you buy products from Chinese suppliers, you’ve most likely been horrified by some of the poor quality control systems you’ve seen. In some cases, we managed to identify over 20 things that could easily go wrong within a mere 10-minutes walk on the shop floor—on fabrication & assembly or even on just a single product!

Chinese New Year (CNY), the most disruptive event in China, officially begins on February 5^th, 2019. The rush, and subsequent slowdown, often much sooner than that depending on the facility.

Anyone involved in trade and manufacturing knows that the trade row between the United States and China is not good for business. Rising tariffs on both sides create price increases that are felt in almost every industry.

The idea of factory process improvement is something a lot of factory owners and managers in China are resistant to, but the truth is that improvement can be effectively managed and scaled up by simply starting out small.

How many times do you go to meetings that get nothing done?  

Why is so much time wasted?

Some planner, production manager, or even the boss leads the meeting and only coffee, and sometimes not even that, can keep you awake.

Do you often wonder, “Isn’t there a better use of my time?”

There is!

In this article, I’m going to share 3 easy tips you can put into action today to laser focus your factory meetings around your company’s most important goals: quality, cost, delivery, safety and morale.

Many factories will quickly offer the credentials, such as ISO certification, as proof of their production management systems. However, this is often (not always) a paper facade that masks the real systems and processes in the factory. Let's take a closer look at a recent factory visit to see how simple it can be to get beyond the veil and starting improving systems today.

There are two main causes for production bottlenecks:

1. Poor line balancing – some jobs are running slower than others, and materials pile up in front of the slowest ones.
2. Poor process control and/or poor maintenance – the equipment does not run as it was designed to run. It is often down or busy re-processing materials.

In this post I'll focus on the first cause...