Engineering Time Standards
Engineering Time Standards are vital to understanding both the capability and the cost of a product or process. They help drive efficiencies within an organization by streamlining processes and serve as a benchmark for financial performance. Ultimately, Engineering Time Standards should set the tempo of production scheduling and should be used and communicated as the standard in every department of the organization.
Statements of Work
A co-packing manufacturer had trouble with schedule compliance. By mid-week, fourth and fifth revisions of the schedule were being published to compensate for jobs closing out ahead of schedule as well as behind schedule. Strategy3 was hired to evaluate the entire SKU mix within production and Industrial Engineering Time Studies were conducted. The Standards which were issued took into account each process, its bottleneck, its setup time, changeover time, and break schedule. The time studies were converted to Engineering Time Standards and were published to production. Each Engineering Time Standard detailed the labor balance of the line or process so that the standards could be achieved consistently during each run. Soon thereafter, schedule compliance increased as the number of revisions throughout the week decreased and ultimately 20% and higher efficiencies were gained.
A semi-automated production plant was running two shifts to achieve customer demand. Strategy3 performed capability studies across all automated equipment and balanced this against the true labor needs. Ultimately Engineering Time Standards were produced and issued to the plant. These standards became the daily run rate and standardized crew sizes which led to an entire shift reduction. One shift then continued producing what two shifts had previously produced, for an overall improvement of 50%.