Focus on 'speed to market.' (faster delivery techniques for metal casting companies)

"Reengineering" was the buzzword on everyone's lips when Michael Hammer's book, Reengineering the Corporation, hit the stands in 1993. Since then, and since the term reengineering became one of the most overused words in business parlance, the fanfare has died down, but the essential ideas put forth in that manifesto for change have made significant inroads throughout corporate America - and even in the metalcasting industry.

Call it what you like-shorter lead times, flow manufacturing or reduced cycle times - the common theme is delivering your product to the market faster than your competitors. Moreover, and seemingly as an accidental by-product (although Hammer predicted this in his book), metalcasters are discovering that, by focusing on speed to market, their companies are generating large quality, cost, profitability and customer satisfaction benefits as well.

Further, their organizations are working more smoothly, as functional departments and political turf battles give way to process-oriented, cross-functional management structures.

Identify, Explode and Rebuild

There are two basic steps to increasing speed to market. First, important processes must be identified, exploded and rebuilt. In our view and in the view of many of our foundry clients, you should first identify the steps involved in new job startup. This process begins with developing the quotation (a sales function), includes tooling development and sampling (often internal political footballs), and ends with the job running at production levels (manufacturing's responsibility).

Note that this process is broad and is related to an activity rather than to a functional department. Also, it is defined as the customer might see it, rather than as foundry personnel would.

Anyway, with a process identified, it must then be exploded; that is, each and every one of its constituent activities must be identified. The basic idea here is to map the process step-by-step, inch-by-inch, through every twist, turn, office, department, in-box and out-box from start to finish.

After that has been done, each subactivity must be identified as value-adding (only a few will be) or non value-adding (you'll be surprised how much is here). Finally, a new-and-improved process must be drawn up. This new process will almost always be cross-functional in nature and will require creative management and administrative structures to work.

Refine Your Process

That brings us to the second basic step in increasing speed to market - being smart enough to make the new process work effectively. Outside experts can sure help, as many foundry management teams suffer from lack of experience with other business methods. More importantly, a willingness to reach beyond politics, parochial thinking and narrowly defined departmental boundaries is the key to success. Here are three examples of what I mean:

1. Quote Development - At one time, one foundry routed every quote to more than a dozen different individuals in marketing, manufacturing, quality and engineering before sending it back to the general manager for final pricing approval. When this "process" worked well, a quote would be ready in three weeks. When it didn't work well, it could take three months. Through process redesign, a cross-functional team reached the point in which the entire process took three days. Today, this foundry is redesigning once again and hopes to make the process work in 24 hr.

2. Capital Investments - A very savvy foundry operations manager I know says that one key to future manufacturing success is wise investments in the coreroom. As an example of what he means, he tells me that matching the speed of core production to mold production rates is critical to decreasing total cycle times, increasing speed to market and gaining a competitive edge. If core production is significantly slower than mold production rates, he says foundries must build ahead, accumulate costly core inventories, and incur significant opportunity costs for the castings they could not make as well as the customers they could not satisfy during that build- ahead time.

Instead, he says foundries should reengineer traditional capital investment decision-making and bite the bullet up front on more expensive core machines and coreboxes. This allows them to reap the much greater longer term benefits of lower inventories, increased throughput, higher productivity, increased speed to market, better marketing opportunities and happier customers.

3. Sales Management - Traditionally, sales people were territory-based and called on darn near anyone and everyone in their territories. However, TDC's clients do things differently; they focus their sales people on carefully selected target accounts and avoid that shotgun-style of selling altogether.

Further, these account-based sales people are now more like cross-functional team leaders than the lone voices in the wilderness of the past. Their job is to coordinate a team selling effort comprised of personnel from sales and marketing, manufacturing, quality and engineering, and the shop floor. In that way, the foundry maximizes the synergy between marketing and manufacturing to its customers' and the bottom line's - benefit.

Though reengineering has become a dirty word for some, CEOs must take to heart their customers' strong need for increased speed to market. Once they do that and begin to consider what it takes to decrease process cycle times, they will begin to see their way to the future of competitiveness in American business generally and, most importantly, of the metalcasting industry and their own companies.