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World Class Manufacturing Systems Division
1. Manufacturing,
2. Distribution,
3. Supply chain management strategy
4. Operations management consulting,
5. ISO14001, ISO9000, ISO9001, six-sigma,
6. Time study, standards development
7. Methods engineering, process improvement,
8. Lean manufacturing
Definition
ARMS World Class Manufacturing Systems is a different set of
concepts, principles, policies and techniques for managing and
operating a manufacturing company. It primarily focuses on continual
improvement in quality, cost, lead time, flexibility and customer
service.
ARMS World Class Manufacturing Systems is a process-driven approach where implementations usually involve the following philosophies and techniques:
| • Make-to-order • Streamlined flow • Families of parts • Cellular manufacturing • Total preventive maintenance • Quick changeover • Zero Defects |
• Just-in-time • Variability reduction • High employee involvement • Cross functional teams • Multi-skilled employees • Statistical process control |
Companies engaging in World Class Manufacturing strategies focus on improving operations, strive to eliminate waste and create lean organizations. This often results in higher productivity. But these companies also focus on speed of total throughput from order capture through delivery setting new standards for delivery without the heavy dependence on inventory. Sequential methods of performing work are being replaced with concurrent methods to compress time, and functional and hierarchical divisions of duties are being replaced by team-driven activities.
The Issues
ARMS World Class Manufacturing Systems is a process-driven approach
to improving manufacturing operations. It is often confused to mean
standards of quality and images such as Rolls-Royce or Rolex.
It is in direct conflict with traditional capacity-driven
manufacturing mentality found in western culture. The implementation
will often surface resistance to change and "we've always done it
this way" arguments. The worse resistance is usually found in lower
and middle management, but can also be found in the mindset of
workers as well. A case for change has to be created along with high
employee involvement.
Capitalization is also a major issue when new equipment is required
for quick changeover, faster cycle times, and flexibility in
operations. Executives may take a piecemeal approach to save on
investment costs as an alternative and find themselves disappointed
with the lesser results.
Just like anything else, World Class Manufacturing is an operational
strategy that, if implemented properly, will provide a new dimension
to competing: quickly introducing new customer focused high quality
products and delivering them with unprecedented lead times, swift
decisions, and manufacturing products with high velocity.
Pragmatic Applications
ARMS World Class Manufacturing Systems techniques have been proven
over and over, time and time again and offer alternatives to the
traditional capacity-driven approaches of mass production and
economic order quantities. Most WCM techniques can be applied in
most process and discrete product manufacturing companies in both
the factory and office. Benefits can be substantial depending upon
the starting point. The best way to approach WCM is through
rationalization of operations and identification of opportunities.
Most of the time, payback periods tend to be 2 years or less.
Our Approach: Tools from a Tool chest
ARMS Consulting Group applies concepts and technologies as the
situation warrants that will result in the ultimate benefit to our
clients. We treat strategies, technologies, and methodologies as
tools in a tool chest, and use them when they offer practical
solutions and achievable results. We believe that each client
situation is unique, with its own unique set of solutions.
Why Us?
ARMS Consulting Group can provide long-term assistance to many
companies in a variety of industries. The firm has the best
consultants in the world today, providing high quality
professionalism through the use of experience and innovation. This
assures our clients that we are assigning the highest qualified
consultants in the profession.
We provide technical expertise, team facilitation, leadership, and
direction in deciding how you will meet the challenge. Your company
will benefit directly from this training.
We have achieved efficiency in our approach to assignments that
allows us to provide high quality technical and managerial advice in
a much shorter amount of time than could be accomplished years ago.
We are able to do this because of the extensive consulting
experience that each of our specialists has.
Consulting Services
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
Use Business Process Reengineering as one of your most powerful
strategic weapons! Drive down the time it takes to develop and
deliver new products, dramatically reduce inventory and
manufacturing time. Slash the cost of quality, and win market share.
This strategy provides you with the means to do it.
Substantial market share has been lost over years to foreign
competitors. No industry is immune. The pressure is on to be the
nothing less than the best. But being the best takes serious change
and it's no easy matter.
You've got to streamline your factories, systems and organizations,
and open up lines of communication. You've got to break down
barriers between departments and put an end to the "we've always
done it this way" argument. You've got to get your employees highly
involved in assuming new responsibilities if you're going to compete
in the global markets in the next decade.
Whether you are a discrete product or process manufacturer,
make-to-order or repetitive, or distributor, ARMS Consulting Group
can help you increase your competitiveness by reducing throughput
time, reducing lead times, increasing capacity, increasing
flexibility, reducing inventory, through selection and
implementation of the right manufacturing or distribution processes,
or strategy for your company. We are a boutique consulting firm that
specializes in manufacturing, distribution, Strategic planning,
methods engineering and supply chain management. We serve companies
wishing to become world-class performers.
We get results!!!
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is an enterprise-wide information
system designed to coordinate all the resources, information, and
activities needed to complete business processes such as order
fulfillment or billing.
An ERP system supports most of the business system that maintains in
a single database the data needed for a variety of business
functions such as Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management,
Financials, Projects, Human Resources and Customer Relationship
Management.
An ERP system is based on a common database and a modular software
design. The common database can allow every department of a business
to store and retrieve information in real-time. The information
should be reliable, accessible, and easily shared. The modular
software design should mean a business can select the modules they
need, mix and match modules from different vendors, and add new
modules of their own to improve business performance.
Ideally, the data for the various business functions are integrated.
In practice the ERP system may comprise a set of discrete
applications, each maintaining a discrete data store within one
physical database.
Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Key to the success of an agile supply chain is the speed and
flexibility with which business processes can be accomplished.
Achieving this capability requires all physical and logical events
within the supply chain to be enacted swiftly, accurately, and
effectively. The faster parts, information, and decisions flow
through an organization, the faster it can respond to customer
needs.
The information chain must be streamlined and electronically linked
at every point, so that information flow is direct- -without
interruptions and delays. Business cycle times must be reduced to
the time it actually takes to effectively process information.
As ARMS Consulting Group developed sound process and techniques to
successfully implement ERP systems, we integrated our ERP systems
implementation approaches with reengineering business processes.
Today, we have proven techniques for successful BPR and ERP
implementations that produce measureable, achievable, and
substantial financial benefits, as well as substantial productivity
increases for our clients.
We are strong with BPR implementations, because we are intimate with
manufacturing and distribution processes at the detailed work
instruction level.
These are the various services and applications we offer, as part of our Supply Chain Management consulting portfolio, for BPR implementation efforts in both manufacturing and distribution:
| • Value Stream Mapping • Increased Productivity • Inventory Reduction • Business Cycle Time Reduction • Order-to-Ship Lead Time Reduction • Increased Business Cycle Throughput • Strategic Planning • Technology Analysis • Operational Audits • Inventory, Capacity and Cycle Time Reduction Performance Audit • Business Process Mapping • Work Flow Analysis/Assessment |
• Policy/Procedure Development/Rewrite
• Business Process Reengineering • Functional Needs Assessments • Software Package Evaluation/Selections • Outsource/In-house Assessments • Organization Design • Implementation Support • Logistics/Distribution Systems Evaluation • Cost/Benefit Analysis • Cycle-time Reduction Consulting • Project Management |
Time-based Manufacturing (TBM)
Use Time-based Manufacturing as one of your most powerful strategic
weapons! Drive down the time it takes to develop and deliver new
products, dramatically reduce inventory and manufacturing time.
Slash the cost of quality, and win market share. This strategy
provides you with the means to do it.
We assist clients in developing and implementing manufacturing
strategies with demonstrated, substantial results.
These are the various services and applications we offer, as part of our Supply Chain Management consulting portfolio, for manufacturing efforts:
| • Value stream Mapping • Cycle-time Reductions • Inventory Reductions • Throughput Time Reductions • Order-to-Ship Lead Time Reductions • Operating Cost Reductions • Cycle-time Reductions • Fixed Overhead Cost Reductions • Variable Overhead Cost Reductions • Substantial Increases in Capacity/ Throughput • Physical Flow Improvements • Increases in Revenue Generating Floor Space • Manufacturing Strategy • Lean Manufacturing Applications • Make-to-Order Applications • Flexible Cell Design • Cost/Benefits • Factory Design • Work Center Design • Assembly Evaluation/Design • Production Planning • Supply Chain Modeling • Operational Audits • Plant Evaluations • Plant Consolidation |
• Machine/Equipment Analysis/Specifications • Capacity Planning • Materials Logistics Analysis • Inventory Planning • Process Planning/Design • Material Handling Design • Core Process Identification/Development • Organization Development • Business Process Reengineering • Information Technology Evaluations • Scheduling Development • Acquisition Analysis & Due Diligence • Cycle-time Reduction • Cellular Manufacturing Design • Logistics Analysis • Factory Design • Operations Assessments • Supply Chain Modeling • Machine/Equipment Analysis/Specifications • Capacity Planning • Process Design • Material Handling Design • Outsource Assessments • Materials Management • Project Management |
Organizational Development Consulting Services Offered:
Becoming an agile world class company requires overcoming
organizational inertia. Often overlooked are outdated cultures,
ineffective management skills, bureaucratic red tape, and a reward
system that doesn't fit. How do you get your ARMS around this? By
integrating successful organizational development strategies with
your main initiative.
We are a boutique consulting firm that specializes in manufacturing,
distribution and supply chain management. We serve companies wishing
to become world-class performers. We get results!!!
ARMS Consulting Group supports companies who wish to achieve world
class performance and become market leaders with Organizational
Development techniques that support Lean Manufacturing, as well as
many others. We assist clients in developing and implementing
manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain management strategies
with demonstrated, substantial results.
These are the various services and applications we offer, as part of
our Supply Chain Management consulting portfolio, for organizational
development efforts:
| • Organization Evaluation/Assessment • Organization Design • Organization Culture Assessment/ Transformation • Change Management • Leadership Style Assessment/Development • Leadership Collaboration Clinics • Lean Workforce Organization Development • Self-Directed Team Development/Facilitation |
• Performance-based Reward System Development/Facilitation • Performance Metric Development • Benchmarking • Top Management Facilitation • Team Building • Workforce Classification Design • Project Management |
Strategic Planning Consulting Services Offered:
Our firm has learned through direct experience in facilitating
strategic planning sessions with top management that plans fail in
the traditional organization for a distinct list of reasons:
• First: "hipshot" thinking. Too many strategic planning sessions are accomplished over a stint in a nice resort. The time is often compressed to a few days for such critical planning. Executives don't have much of a chance to think through their assignments.
• Second: quite often only a few key executives are involved in the planning sessions. Functional departments may not be represented in a plan that consequently affects them. This results in having too few owners of the plan.
• Third: when a plan is devised, it may not be authored by people below the first tier of management. The old paradigm is that the top executives are the best qualified to accomplish the planning. Since the participation is limited, those responsible for daily operations in the firm have no authorship in the future of the company: no "buy-in."
• Fourth: when the strategic plan is finished, it often dies at the end of the sessions because it is not integrated with the annual business plan or the annual budget. In this instance, life goes on in the organization the same way it did before the strategic planning session.
• Fifth: too few people are measured by the success or failure of the plan. If too few feet are held to the fire for the plan's outcome, it has little chance of success. We believe that you get what you measure. Measure the results of the plan, and you will get results.
• Sixth: hardly anyone gets paid as a result of the success or failure of the strategic plan. Except for a few key executives who have objectives to meet to make their bonuses, pay systems generally tend to be mutually exclusive from the success of a strategic plan. Workers and salaried people, in addition to middle managers, are paid as a result of some obscure compensation system.
• Seventh: individual and team efforts are seldom ever tied to the outcome of the company's strategy. Workers respond to how they are measured. They know that keeping the machines running increases utilization, that's what they have been taught that the company wants, and so they build inventory, even when it’s not needed.
• Eighth: most workers, whether they are executives, salaried, or labor, don't know how to behave as a team member. Our society teaches us to be heroes, to worship heroes, and that we are rewarded for individualistic efforts. It starts in school with academic and sport competition. The hero is the pitcher with the most games won, or the quarterback with the most yards gained. We foster entrepreneurial efforts in business. As a result, most team efforts in the company boardroom are feigned.
The overall quality of the long range plan increases substantially
when executives have an opportunity to think through the
ramifications of their actions. The best situation is when a plan is
devised during one or two day sessions, twice a month, over a period
of several months. This allows assignments to be given out in
between sessions, and provides the executives a chance to spend more
concentrated time on the assignment at home, or in the evenings when
they are more relaxed.
The quality of each individual's contribution to the plan vastly
improves. Then, the results of the assignments are brought in to the
sessions and synthesized with the efforts of others to achieve a
much higher quality plan.
The Strategic Planning consulting and facilitation services we
offer, as part of our Supply Chain Management consulting portfolio,
are:
• Raising awareness and involving everyone in building a new direction.
• Developing a new competitive direction for your business and becoming more customers driven.
• Developing the master plan while building a custom strategy for inducing radical change.
• Developing cohesiveness among managers using a team building approach that focuses on results.
• Creating a cohesive team environment through high involvement.
• Formulating teams to streamline processes improve productivity and substantially reduce costs.
• Developing missions, goals and objectives for self-managing teams that vertically link with the company's strategic direction.
• Using a state-of-the-art tool to integrate the vision with annual business/budget planning, and daily operations.
• Developing measurable action plans to ensure success.
• Creating accountabilities and linking the new direction with performance measurement and reward systems
• Shared Mission Statement Development
• Shared Statement of Purpose Development
• Shared Core Values Statement Development
• Top-down Objectives/Goals
• Vertically/Horizontally-Integrated Action Plans
• SWOT Analysis
• Gap Analysis
• Performance-based Reward System Development
• Performance Metric Development
• Benchmarking
• Global Outsourcing
• Acquisition Assessment
• Due Diligence
• Top Management Facilitation
