Time Out: Using Visible Pull Systems to Drive Process Improvement

Time Out introduces a revolutionary process, Visible Pull, for integrating the new world-class management tools aimed at cycle time reduction, quality improvement, and optimum customer service. Many leading companies—DuPont, Union Carbide, and International Specialty Chemicals—have seen significant benefits from its application. Typical benefits have included a 10 to 20 percent gain in capacity, a 30 to 40 percent reduction in inventory, a 50 percent reduction in cycle time, and more. In this authoritative new book, one of Visible Pull's pioneers describes the development of Visible Pull and lays out a detailed roadmap for applying it to your own unique business. With thirty years of hands-on experience, Wayne Smith knows the obstacles that can impede improvement in a plant. Here, he outlines the changes in philosophy and behavior that must take place before progress can be made. Smith differentiates between the traditional, inefficient "push" scheduling, where forecasts are made and everyone pushes material forward to meet the schedule, and the Pull Systems, which limit and control production based on downstream demand. With Visible Pull, workstations act in concert with one another, which in turn enables the company to better allocate resources, build a culture of teamwork, and link time-on-line to business goals.

In a series of five logical, carefully structured segments, Smith takes you step-by-step through the entire Visible Pull process, including:

• Making the Decision—helps you decide if Visible Pull is appropriate for your organization through a high-level overview of its goals, resource requirements, and potential benefits
• Assessing and Planning—explains how to identify and assess opportunities for improvement, choose the right tools, and develop a specific plan for change
• Pull Systems—demonstrates how to use Pull Systems as the primary tool for managing time in a process and how to apply them to your specific environment
• Visible Management and Continuous Improvement—describes how to use Pull Systems to institute an ongoing improvement process, build employee involvement, measure your organization's evolving capabilities, and guide your future growth.

Replete with examples drawn from the experience of world-class manufacturers, Time Out in-cludes a full range of simulation techniques, as well as detailed, real-world application methods set within the context of an integrated enterprise.

Designed for manufacturing, operations, and distribution managers, supervisors, team leaders, design engineers, and others concerned with manufacturing processes, Time Out offers an immediate and unprecedented opportunity for truly breakthrough improvement.

Time Out offers a detailed roadmap for dramatically improving manufacturing cycle time in your company by using Visible Pull Systems to integrate and focus the complex array of competing management techniques. The book details how world-class businesses like DuPont, Union Carbide, and others have benefited from implementing cycle time techniques and how you can draw from the toolbox to meet your company's unique needs. With Visible Pull, companies learn how to maximize the use of their manufacturing workstations, allocate resources better, and link time-on-line to business goals. With a full range of real-world examples, simulation techniques, and application methods, Time Out offers manufacturing managers, supervisors, engineers, and others a dynamic new way of raising overall manufacturing performance.

"Wayne Smith has an obvious depth of technical and conceptual knowledge together with a breadth of manufacturing experience rarely found these days. Our members know the genuine article when they see it and Wayne Smith is asked back after every presentation."—William H. King, President, AME Northeast Region.

"The principles set forward in this book apply to every plant. Wayne Smith describes the basic principles of cycle time reduction, Visible Pull Systems, and bottleneck identification and protection, which are easily grasped from the CEO office down to the shop floor."—P. J. Boyle, Operations Manager, UOP LLC.

"By applying the simple, straightforward methods championed by Smith, your organization will see benefits pouring to the bottom line."—Alan Goodman, Corporate Quality Manager, ISP Company.

"Wayne Smith's cycle time reduction strategies and Visible Pull Systems are the glue that unifies all functions of the operation in all critical performance areas. Time is clearly the enemy of efficiency, and this is the best program I've seen to get the organization after it."—David E. Rousse, Vice President and General Manager, FiberMark, Inc.