FOREFRONT MANUFACTURING

Presented by Mahesh Guleria Harshit Maroo Deboleena Roy Hina Bhalla Kshitij deshpande

About Company
Established in 1992. Gone for IPO in 2007 Referred to as getting our house in order Separated Contracting & Manufacturing High quality wooden doors & door frames. Installed in commercial properties & apartments. To capitalize on lower labour cost. 90% of manufacturing were installed in Hong Kong and Macau. Exporting to Europe & Middle East. Just In Time and Make To Order.

Plant Tour
Leased 7 factory building in two groups. The buildings housed :1)500 workers 2)80 management and administrative personnel 3)20 factory supervisors.

Engineering Department
Corodinated with contractors,property developers and architects. Product development team work with simple wood working and finishing tools. Production plan specified material,dimension,colors and finishes. Capability to cope with defective and unavailable equipment. Door set contains four component types outside surfaces,inner core,decorative trim and frames.

Cutting Department
Rough lumber was cut and planned into boards. Skilled workers operated machinery Unskilled workers placed lumber on equipment Careful lumber selection and cutting. Boards were stockpiled and sent to carpentry department.

Carpentry Department
Workers took medium density fiberboard or high fiber density fiberboard from sorting area. Apply wood veneer to provide outer surface. Varnished door surface returned to carpentry. Holes were cut for handles, locks and windows. Cutting was done by programmable,computer numerical controlled machining center.

Forming Department
Batches of molding and frames were produced. Cores and surface of door were being prepared. sanded, filled and coated

Assembly & Packing Department

Components were accumulated in kits. Moldings are fastened to doors. Doors are combined with matching door frames. Door sets were packed and stored.

Finishing Department
Carts of partially completed door surfaces were sent. Sanded multiple times until it becomes smooth. Until they were not flat ,not sent to automated finishing line. Door surfaces could be loaded at beginning and middle of line. Some machine on line could be set up for more than one operation. Sandpaper rolls could be changed in few minutes. Time consuming to change coating equipment.

Maintenance Department
Machine breakout frequently. Repair parts comes from Italy which is very time consuming. Hard to predict which part will fail. Machines were very expensive. Employed 8 full time maintenance worker and was under constantly under stress. Pressure for immediate restoration of equipment after breakdown was enormous.

Production Capacity
Varied with product mix and hour of factory operation. Cutting department 350 door set with relative ease. Finishing department could only process 300 door sets. Second shift was less productive. Overtime workers were paid 40% premium on weekdays and 100% premium on Sunday. Extra shift possess managerial problems.

New Factory
Due to inefficiency inherent in old facility,new facility was proposed. 60000 sq.meter production facility. 5 single storey production building Multi storey administration building. Multi storey dormitory for workers.

Management system
No proper documentation of work No proper guidelines for handing work in process inventory between departments Errors and defects were not noticed and reported Supervisors and workers were reluctant to assess blame or acknowledge the defects Defects were spotted late in the production process Process routings and bills of material not always followed Yield variability and scheduling issues made it difficult to store and manage inventory

Workforce Turnover
25% population of Guangdong province were migrant workers 40 factory workers were leaving and being replaced each month. 7 out of 14 managers were leaving within 6 months period. Turnover was very high.

Challenges
Improve manufacturer profitability. Establish two management system. Be responsible to local society. Becoming leading wood door manufacturer.

Issues
high costs low yields unreported defects and equipment that fails to operate near its rated capacity Organizational and change management challenges high employee turnover excessive use of overtime failure of supervisors to observe or report employee errors are

Our suggestions
Increase standardization, providing different product lines Job rotation, incentives to laborers Implementation of improved IT technologies like SCM Proper assembly line balancing MRP Training employees on machines Keep back up machines in times of failure Formation of cross functional teams Include labor and union leaders in the management system Proper flow of information Keep an inspection team for machines and work