QSO 600 Milestone 2

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Southern New Hampshire University *

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600

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Industrial Engineering

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Apr 3, 2024

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pdf

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Uploaded by nicolemaio323

1 Production Needs: Cycle Time Cycle time and takt time are durational measurements of different processes within manufacturing. Cycle time is defined as the time between when the operation begins and the operation ends. Takt time is the speed at which the product needs to be created in order to satisfy the needs of the customer (Verma, 2020). Lululemon has 491 stores and on average sells 120 pairs of leggings per day - this totals 58,920 pairs of leggings sold per day in-store (Trefis Team, 2015). In-store sales are estimated to be about 70% of sales, and online sales making up about 30% (Klebnikov, 2019). This means the estimated sales per day online are 25,230 for a total of 84,150 sales per day. Cycle time can be calculated by the total worked minutes divided by the total pieces produced. Lululemon has 35 manufacturers throughout the world that produce their leggings. An estimate of production for a worker would be 100 units per 8 hour shift. This equates to a cycle time being 4.8 minutes per pair of leggings. Takt time is used to optimize systems by matching the takt time with customer demand to ensure teams and machines waste neither resources nor time (Toggl, n.d.) In a manufacturing facility that has two shifts, each eight hours - the available production time is 16 hours per day per facility. This multiplied by the 35 production facilities is a total of 560 total hours of available production time per day. To meet demand of 84,150 pairs of leggings produced per day, the takt time would be 0.4 seconds. It is important to remember that takt time does not account for the amount of manpower needed to produce the product (SensrTrx, 2019). Production Needs: Bottlenecks

2 Process bottlenecks are items that limit the capacity of a system. A bottleneck in one area of manufacturing will constrain the whole processes capacity to produce. With a new product launch, existing processes may not be the same and equipment needs can differ from equipment available. Trying to adapt an existing facility to a new product can create accumulation bottlenecks (Anjoran, 2020). An accumulation bottleneck occurs when the production line calculates product at the most time consuming station within the queue. Accumulation does not necessarily occur due to a wait time, but can be due to an inexperienced operator or because a machine frequently breaks down. Wait times within a manufacturing facility are when a machine is waiting for product to move through the production line - this happens when the machine before the waiting machine has a bottleneck (Markgraf, 2016). Equipment can also create a bottleneck due to failures, maintenance, or discrepancies in the amount of certain types of machinery. Bottlenecks can be created by the supply chain. Since Lululemon only sources their fabrics from 26 facilities and does not keep exclusive contracts - supply chain bottlenecks could be especially prevalent. If a supplier cannot deliver parts as scheduled, they are essentially holding back production (Anjoran, 2020). It is wise to identify prices bottlenecks in production using a bar chart to analyze the capacity of each step of the manufacturing process. By identifying which production steps have the lowest capacity, the capacity of the whole system can be raised by increasing that one step in the process (Anjoran, 2020). Production Needs: Lean Management

3 Lean product development refers to a specific way of thinking and practices that focus on reducing resources used, reducing work-in-process, reducing time and reducing cost within production. Implementing lean management to new precut development will ultimately have an effect on cycle time by improving processes in a way that reduces unnecessary expenditures. There are five key principles of lean thinking and they are: defining and maximizing customer value, identify the value stream and eliminate waste, make the value-creating steps flow, empower the team, and learn and improve (NPD, n.d). Defining and maximizing customer value means placing a focus on what the customer will pay for specific products or features. Once that is resolved, the producer will determine how cost and waste can be delivered to ensure the cost to produce will be less than the consumer is willing to pay (Millard, 2020). Identifying value streams and eliminating waste is to evaluate the value stream (the value stream is all the processes, steps and materials necessary to get the product to the consumer) and analyzing which activities create value, which can be eliminated, and which do not create value but cannot be eliminated. Making the value-creating steps flow involves eliminating anything that interrupts the flow of value. Empowering the team means to allow and encourage the team to solve problems for themselves. Lastly, learning and improving requires the relentless pursuit of perfection and to continuously seek opportunities to improve, and reduce the cost of each step of the value stream (Millard, 2020). Production Needs: Strategy There are lean practices that can be applied to new product development to account for adverse effects on cycle time, Within the principle of defining value to the customer - Lululemon

4 can employ quality function deployment. Quality function deployment is transforming customer need into product specifications in order to maximize value to the customer. Within identifying value stream and reducing waste - standardized work can be created to create a common way of doing things. For the principle of making the value creating steps flow - pipeline management can be utilized (NPD, n.d). Pipeline management avoids overloading the pipeline and controls queue time. Empowering the team is a principle that can be exported with the right resources. This means having the right number of people at the right time who have the right skills and experience. Lastly - learning and improving can be applied. This can be applied by documenting knowledge and information. This way costly and time consuming “re-learning” can be avoided (NPD, n.d). Production Needs: Materials Needs Labor, equipment and materials will be needed for the introduction of the Everlux fabric lines. Currently, Everlux fabric is only being used within the Wunder Train leggings within the 35 approved manufacturing sites. Since the majority of the leggings maintain a common stitching and cutting pattern, new equipment should not be needed. Lululemon will need increased labor capacity when the leggings are first released and may also need employee training to teach the tricks of working with the new fabric. Lululemon should increase their labor capacity is because it is not uncommon for new releases to sell out quickly There is an infamous instance where Lululemon leggings sold out 27 minutes after being released (Clarke, 2017). Lululemon should seek to hire both new employees, bring on seasonal employees, and expand the hours of their most experienced employees to meet the labor demands of the new product launch.

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