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Cosworth is driving finite scheduling to enable agile, flexible and transparent working across engineering, assembly, test - in fact, the whole business
Forget guesstimates and fire-fighting. Consider instead the value of proven deliverable production plans with schedules you can change and optimise no matter what's thrown at you, using rapid "what-ifs1 to get decisions right and achievable. Cosworth did, and so impressed has the company been with the power of its advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems that it's spread them throughout all manufacturing cells, and made them the heart of its very impressive and fast engineer- and build-to-order business.
And it hasn't stopped there. Being challenging by nature, Cosworth is also using the same tools to improve internal engineering and production collaboration as well as the manufacturing processes themselves, while also developing the means to provide fast WIP (work in progress) and stock financial data, even improved warehouse management and customer service.
Cosworth's story is an eye opener, not least because if APS works so well in what is one of the most dynamic and innovative environments on the planet, it can work anywhere. Planning and scheduling manager Darren Dowding explains that everything started to change when the firm decided to move its manufacturing into several separate core teams, each with its own machines and people - including production engineers and schedulers - specialising in particular components and assemblies.
"When we did that we went for quite aggressive lead time reduction targets. For exampie, we wanted to reduce machine times for crankshafts from 17 weeks to six," he says.
Hence initially Microsoft Project, which although a valuable experience was ultimately not flexible enough...