BPM Bits & Business Flows #10: Stop the Switch-Over Bleeding 🚀

Welcome to Week 10! In the process industry, the time spent cleaning a tank or re-calibrating a machine for a new product is time that produces zero value. To conclude our phase on Planning & Operational Agility, we are looking at how to turn those idle hours into productive ones.

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Fun Fact #10

In the bpExperts Business Flows, we don't plan orders in isolation. We use Campaign Production Scheduling to group demands into shared production runs.

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Did you know?

Within our framework, Campaign Production refers to a manufacturing approach where products from one family — sharing a common production process — are produced together or in a sequence. This specific logic allows organizations to maximize capacity and avoid the high costs associated with frequent machine switch-overs.

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The Expert Deep Dive

Campaign production is a strategic necessity when production capacity is high but switch-over costs between product families are even higher. Our framework manages this complexity through several key steps:

Pooling and Leveling Planners pool planned orders and level them to take out variability, eventually sequencing them within available capacity.

Pre-defined Campaigns Campaigns are pre-defined during the planning stage, and actual confirmed demands are then scheduled within those windows.

Capacity Optimization This approach is most effective when the available production capacity greatly exceeds the demand for a single specific product, but the aggregate demand of a "family" of different products fills that capacity.

Scheduling Objective Since capacity is pre-defined by the campaign, the primary scheduling focus shifts to ensuring the availability of all required components to maintain the run.

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Why it matters for Process Industry Leaders

Cost Reduction It avoids major switch-over costs associated with changing the type of product family being manufactured.

Predictable Lead Times Once a campaign is established, lead times for those demands are determined by the campaign schedule, allowing for more accurate customer commitments.

Resource Efficiency It facilitates the effective utilisation of free resources to fulfill demand more consistently.

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The Reality Check 💬

How much production time did you lose to machine "changeovers" last week?

• A) Less than 5% (Our campaigns are tight!) ⏱️
• B) Around 20% (A necessary evil...) 🛠️
• C) We don't track changeover time (The silent killer!) 🔪

Let's discuss your scheduling strategies in the comments! 👇

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Master the Flow

We have mastered Planning and Operational Agility. Join us next Monday as we move into Phase 3 and explore the intricacies of Quality & Compliance Orchestration.

Discover more about our Business Flows methodology here: Business Flows — bpExperts

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