H.C.Starck Essay

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Why the lead times so long? In H.C.Stark, on one hand, according to the “Customer Lead-Time Chart” indicating all sales orders placed from March to September in 1999 with a shipment, the average customer lead time is 6.8 weeks, which is nearly 7 weeks. On the other hand, based on the “Manufacturing Lead-Time Chart” showing all production orders matched against March to September in 1999 sales orders, the average manufacturing lead time is 2.3 weeks, which is just over 2 weeks. Usually, the manufacturing lead time only takes a small portion of the overall customer lead time in the manufacturing industry. However, in H.C.Starck, the time used in converting the sales order to process order, passing the process order to Operations, and issuing materials to Operations is conspicuous compared to the manufacturing time. The time consumed in carrying out these operations is nearly 5 weeks. This is the reason why the lead times are so long in H.C.Starck. The follows are three main factors that cause the long lead time. 1. Wrong information in SAP The sales department should not make up a delivery date even though the SAP requires one. It makes the system not trustable, especially the production planning. Thus, the SAP in H.C.Starck is totally ignored by the staff and it leads that all the order from Sales to Operations are transmitted through a manual paper-based process, which takes a lot of time and high risks of making mistakes. 2. The “Expedite late orders” Production Policy A daily “drumbeat” meeting is held for reminding the staff that which orders have to be expedited. Significantly, order expeditions are common in H.C.Starck because of the tolerance of daily “drumbeat” meetings, which “encourages” the staff expediting late orders rather than following the production schedule. 3. High Product Diversity The product diversity is too high due to the

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