You're facing material delivery challenges. How can you adjust your production schedule to overcome them?

My first priority is customer satisfaction. Gather the facts on delay and talk to the supplier to understand their roadblocks to delivery. Use that information to reevaluate internal operations that are required to ship product. Think creatively to compress the delay internally. Maybe a weekend shift? Maybe staging equipment to be ready to produce as soon as possible? Add labor? Involve your team and explain the problem, get input from your team on compressing time to deliver after supplies arrive. Once the facts are known, contact the customer give them facts, explore a smaller lot size for an initial delivery and learn how urgent their need is. Delays are never good but delays without notice are worse.

Here are some immediate mitigate plan and long-term solutions: 1/. Assess Inventory Levels: Conduct an inventory audit to understand current stock levels of critical materials. Identify materials that are in short supply and those with adequate stock. 2/. Prioritize Production: Prioritize the production of items that require materials readily available. Delay or reschedule production runs that depend on delayed materials. 3/. Alternative Sourcing: Identify and qualify alternative suppliers/ spot buy if needed 4/. Supplier Collaboration: Work closely with suppliers to understand their delivery schedules and challenges. Share your production schedules with suppliers to improve coordination and reliability.

1. Be proactive, "hitting" a delay versus "anticipating" a delay is key. All schedules should have some risk built into the system to absorb volatility. 2. Validate the Supplier Interruptions and understand the constraints. More often than not, you may have a Supplier that support your other Suppliers. 3. Days of Supply (DOS), will project your material run-out and provide a timeline on when we need to recover by. 4. Scheduling can be accommodated if you have a high product mix going through your assembly line. You can rebalance the production schedule to accommodate for material that is on hand or until a material recovery is in place for Supplier disruption.

Uma vez que uma falha que impacta diretamente o cliente acontece, inicialmente é necessário sanar o problema o quanto antes, mas após essa ação de emergência é de suma importância investigar a fundo sua causa, para tratar o problema em sua "raiz", para tal investigação podem ser úteis as ferramentas como 5W2H, diagrama de Ishikawa, dentre outras, assim como a elaboração de um FMEA para focar na gestão de riscos no processo produtivo, o mais importante é manter o ciclo PDCA, a afim de posteriormente avaliar se a ação tomada foi de fato eficaz ou mesmo se ela pode ser melhorada, pois a melhoria contínua é a chave para uma produção de excelência.