Comments on: How to Reduce Your Lot Size Part 3—Customer, Machine, Leveling, and Tradition https://www.allaboutlean.com/reduce-lot-size-1/ Organize your Industry! Tue, 01 Nov 2022 17:23:33 +0000 hourly 1 By: Christoph Roser https://www.allaboutlean.com/reduce-lot-size-1/#comment-98214 Mon, 31 Oct 2022 09:03:56 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=28704#comment-98214 Andrey, I disagree. There are usually lots of ways to reduce the changeover time, and 30% is usually possible even without major invest (but minor stuff like a sensor or a jig etc). While maximizing the batch size reduces changeover time and saves money, the money lost due to the larger batch sizes is usually significant but underestimated, and sometimes even not possible to measure using cost accounting.

]]> By: Andrey Abutin https://www.allaboutlean.com/reduce-lot-size-1/#comment-96120 Sun, 30 Oct 2022 16:05:18 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=28704#comment-96120 The reality is, a lot of transportation and batch processes have a cost that’s mostly fixed and doesn’t change that much based on utilization.

A simple example would be a laundry washer and dryer. It costs MORE to load the machines half full and wash twice as many loads.

Another example would be passenger airlines. A completely empty airplane costs only 20% or so to fly than the plane loaded to the maximum takeoff weight. That’s why airlines oversell flights and eat the cost of paying an occasional passenger(s) who must be bumped to make the weight rather than flying half full planes.

Same thing with changeovers. changeovers are expensive in terms of time, and there’s usually no way to significantly reduce them (unless you’re building a new plant from scratch). Although many times there’s a way to rearrange customer orders to reduce the number of changeovers without too much delay in the lead times.

]]> By: Christoph Roser https://www.allaboutlean.com/reduce-lot-size-1/#comment-98213 Thu, 27 Oct 2022 09:01:07 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=28704#comment-98213 Hi Jason, when I worked in German industry, a multi-week leveling pattern was all the rage, and I have seen many tries. None of them worked. One plant was recommended to me by the former head of production for its leveling, but when I called the section deputies in charge of the different production areas as well as the head of lean, they all told me that it does not work. At a different time I had a discussion with the person in charge of leveling for a large worldwide car supplier with 100’s of plants and asked him where to go to see a good leveling, he just laughed at me and never answered my question.

]]> By: Jason Klemm https://www.allaboutlean.com/reduce-lot-size-1/#comment-95391 Wed, 26 Oct 2022 20:45:21 +0000 https://www.allaboutlean.com/?p=28704#comment-95391 Hello Christopher, I enjoyed reading your post about reducing lot sizes. I liked how you went into detail about the positives and negatives of reducing lot size caused by machine batch size. You mentioned that in your experience, a multi-week leveling pattern does not work at all and that they are bound to fail and increase the chaos. Do you have any specific examples of this happening in your experiences?

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