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This paper presents a novel lean tool called Project Time Deployment (PTD) whose objectives are to classify, analyse, and eliminate losses in order to reduce production lead time in Engineer-to-Order (ETO) environments. By combining two already known approaches, i.e. the Manufacturing Critical-path Time and the Manufacturing Cost Deployment, PTD identifies the critical losses affecting the project, focusing on the business processes where causal losses occur, and providing opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness by reducing or even eliminating them. In ETO projects, the lead time and respecting deadlines are of paramount importance and they are often threatened by several different losses that are difficult to compare. Companies thus need a tool to identify the losses and the tasks where they occur, quantifying them in terms of a single dimension: the time. PTD was designed using a methodology based on four steps: analysis of current solutions, concept design and prototype, proof of concept and validation, and definition of future researches. It was also validated in an industrial implementation concerning an Engineering, Procurement & Construction company operating in the steel industry, and led to an approximate 24% reduction in lead time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rolling Kanban is the name of a kanban management methodology for batch processes manufacturing environment. Proposed in the early 2000s by FESTO Consulting, for two decades we have lost knowledge both from operative and scientific point of view. Basically, Rolling Kanban means a visual planning methodology based on the production of product-families and variants where: (i) set-up times are reduced between the products of the same family, and (ii) relevant times (dozens of minutes if not even hours) must be considered for changeover between products of different families. In addition, the cyclic production sequence between different product families cannot be maintained. Considering that very few technical information and documents are available about this approach, the main objective of this paper is to retrieve and present, for the first time to the scientific community, the Rolling Kanban methodology. Besides, a real industrial implementation concerning a manufacturer of domestic fittings is discussed as a case study. More specifically, two novel versions of the original Rolling Kanban technique are fully presented to effectively overcome certain limits and criticalities found during its operative use, such as the difficulty to realise a pull production, considering increased set-up time for changeover between products of different families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper proposes a modified version of the Manufacturing cost deployment (MCD) method to analyse engineer-to-order (ETO) production systems. The novel approach, named Project cost deployment (PCD), introduces two substantial and innovative modifications. To begin with, the concept of manual assembly macro-activity replaces the traditional concept of station. Then, a brand-new structure for classifying and analysing losses is introduced, that is specifically defined to deal with the inefficiencies of the manual assembly tasks. The validity of the approach is proved by a real-world industrial application. The obtained results demonstrate that the PCD method allows the analyst to identify the hidden losses and to quantify the wastes from an economical point of view. In addition, PCD permits to estimate the impacts of potential (lean) improvement activities and projects in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COntrol of BAlance by CArd-BAsed NAvigation (COBACABANA) is a card-based system for job shop control. This paper presents a real industrial application of COBACABANA aimed at solving production control problems in an Italian manufacturer of valves and flanges, configured as a job shop system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first industrial implementation of COBACABANA. Although COBACABANA can be extended to estimating delivery time allowances, this research focuses only on its shop floor control mechanism. In the case study, the COBACABANA boards and cards are carefully reviewed. The criticalities and limitations of traditional COBACABANA are fully explored and, subsequently, two new boards and a new form are introduced to facilitate its practicality and ease of implementation. The new tools enable planners to better monitor the pre-shop pool status and the progress of orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Construction projects are often unique, time-limited and require a high degree of customization by involving a significant number of Engineer-to-Order (ETO) components. Usually, ETO construction supply chains are composed by a fabrication part off-site and the installation part on-site where different supply chains have to be merged. Generally, many problems are identified during construction on-site and often in a late phase when recovering actions cannot be applied anymore. As a result, construction projects frequently face delays and budget overruns. Owing to these considerations, the paper proposes (i) a framework able to identify the losses and causes of ETO construction supply chains and (ii) a novel metric named Overall Construction Productivity (OCP) supporting the quantification of the overall impact of losses and the implementation of improvement actions. The proposed framework and metric were applied and validated in a medium-sized ETO façade supplier company and a hospital construction project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]