Copyright © 2002 Published: 2002 8.5x11 Soft Cover 204 Pages Table of Contents

Paperback US $89.00

If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it, improve it or optimize it. Simply put – you are at RISK if you lack the ability to see the reality of your production process.

The purpose of this book is to present new and revised concepts and techniques which are simple and practical to apply in improving the design and performance of production processes. These new approaches have been tried in numerous industries and have proven extremely effective if applied correctly. Furthermore, designs and concepts presented in this book should become well understood by both management and operating staff if significant improvement or a world class facility is a target.

This book contains numerous easy to follow worked examples to demonstrate types of production process measurements. It is sincerely hoped that the techniques and concepts presented in this book will be of practical use in your production environment and will contribute to the efforts of improving the effectiveness and efficiency of your process; evaluating machinery systems; reducing wastage and rework and increasing your productivity.

Production requires a method to evaluate its production operations in a holistic manner in order to make good decisions. Because of this need, new developments are slowly changing the way production processes are viewed and designed. It represents a major effort to develop some new tools and ideas as well as update older existing tools that will be useful to all production people as well as government and consumers.

Performance in most production environments is a widely used term such as efficiency that means different things to many different people. Therefore the word performance is relative and qualitative. The only understanding that may be common to all is that it is a reflection of productivity, output or effectiveness of time. Unless it is rigorously defined and understood, the word performance has limited value to decision makers, other than projecting a sense of being or desire. I would define performance as a measure of profitability based on the ability to produce the needed quantity of quality packages in the time required to fulfill customer needs at the lowest per unit cost over a sustained long period of time (>1 year). To many people, performance is the best bang for the buck based on up front costs or capital costs only, not on the best value which is based on capital and ongoing operational costs. If one buys a system based on up front costs or lowest costs to get in without working out operational costs over a one year, three year and five year period, then their anticipated profits (based on marketing targets) will rarely materialize. Too many people are hooked on this false sense of performance that will only contribute to the long-term uncompetitive ness of the company. Short-term or no planning leads to long-term disasters. Anyone can demonstrate excellent performance hour by hour or even day by day, but performance can only truly be judged month by month, quarter by quarter and year by year, which translates into consistent steady-state production under complete control (manual or automatic) at all times and under all conditions.

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