How to Implement Quick Response Manufacturing

Cut Lead Times, Improve Profitability and Market Share

Manufacturers face a growing trend: customers increasingly request highly customized products at short lead times. Companies that have responded to this challenge have seen growth in profitability and market share. The key to this success: reducing lead times to eliminate waste such as expediting, excess inventories and high overhead.

Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) provides a time-tested set of principles and tools to reduce lead time throughout your extended enterprise and build a strong foundation for long term growth. QRM has helped companies reduce lead times by over 80%, reduce costs by 20-40%, and substantially increase market share.

If you manufacture low-volume, high-variety or custom-engineered products, join us for this virtual workshop and learn how Quick Response Manufacturing can give you a strong competitive advantage and put your company in a position to compete with low-wage countries.

You’ll learn how QRM helps you:

• Slash lead times in manufacturing and office operations by 80% or more
• Rapidly introduce new products
• Cut manufacturing costs
• Reduce overhead
• Manufacture higher-quality products
• Increase market share

The Power of Time

• The many hidden costs of long lead times and the power of short lead times
• Pitfalls of traditional methods and how QRM provides a new approach to lead time reduction
• Evaluating your organization(s) through short QRM quiz
• Discussion on waste due to long lead times

QRM in Production

• Defining product families and implementing cells for low-volume or customized production
• How to time-slice shared resources
• Discussion on ownership and cross-training for cell teams

QRM and Your Money

• QRM impact on bottom line; time-based project justification
• Accounting strategies

Material Planning Strategies and Tools for QRM

• Capacity planning: key relationships between utilization and lead time
• Impact of lot sizes on lead times
• High-level MRP scheduling
• Why standard kanban (pull) methods may not be effective for highly customized or low-volume products
• How POLCA, a card-based shop floor control system, speeds the flow of jobs in these situations

Applying QRM in the Office

• Defining product families for office operations
• How to create office cells to streamline cost estimating, order processing and product engineering

Conquering Obstacles to QRM

• Rethinking traditional efficiency and utilization measures
• Examining case studies and examples to see how it’s done
• Identifying obstacles to implementing QRM and how to overcome them

Implementing QRM

• Management mindset (cost-based versus time-based decisions)
• Performance measures to support QRM
• Steps to successful implementation

Rajan Suri

Rajan Suri is Emeritus Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Bachelors degree from Cambridge University (England) and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Professor Suri is the Founding Director of the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, through which around 300 companies have worked with the University on developing and implementing QRM and POLCA strategies. Dr. Suri is author of several books on QRM. He is also the inventor of POLCA and author of the first book on this system: "The Practitioner's Guide to POLCA".

Dr. Suri has consulted for leading firms including Alcoa, Boeing, AT&T, Danfoss, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Hewlett Packard, IBM, John Deere, National Oilwell Varco, Pratt & Whitney, Rockwell Automation and TREK Bicycle. Consulting assignments in Europe and the Far East have given him an international perspective on manufacturing competitiveness.

Professor Suri has received awards from the American Automatic Control Council, The Institute of Management Sciences and the IEEE. In 1999, Suri was made a Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and in 2006 he received SME’s Albert M. Sargent Progress Award for the creation and implementation of the Quick Response Manufacturing philosophy. In 2010 Rajan Suri was inducted into the Industry Week 2010 Manufacturing Hall of Fame.