Customer Reviews

Quick Response Manufacturing: A Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It was hard to put this book down when I first read it. As a manufacturing manager, it almost seemed as if Prof. Suri had spent time in my plant. Most of the topics he addresses in QRM are relevant to the issues I was struggling with. He writes about reducing lead time in all aspects of operations, even product development. His concept of POLCA to create a pull system for low volume, high mix manufacturing is innovative.

I recommend this highly to anyone who is trying to understand a manufacturing operation and how to improve it. It is easy to read and understand with concepts that work.

Like a lot of manufacturing books, this one tries hard to separate itself from all others by showing why every other system is so bad, and then claiming to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. If you can get past all the posing, this book has some fantastic ideas that are suprisingly simple and effective. It is a must read for manufacturing professionals (much like "The Goal"), and if you are in a job shop or custom fab facility, you have to get this book now! Warning: It is a very dry read so expect many long nights filled with coffee and more coffee, and more coffee. Because, typical of most mfg books, Suri feels he has to explain everything to the Nth degree, along with every related issue he can think of. This book could have been done in about 50 pages, so lets hope he comes out with a work-book that does just that... but it the mean time the information here is way to valuable wait for.

Cheers, Al.

This book was great! I couldn't put it down. The author is able to pull together the best of Lean, Kanban, JIT etc... and apply them in a methodology that truly works for a diverse manufacturing plant. We make hundreds if not thousands of different products, some only once and some are repeats but always in small batches. It was really great to read a manufacturing book that will help a plant like ours. Some really great stuff in this book!

As a former manager of strategic planning, now returned to the manufacturing side, I consider this book to be one of the most important I have read over the past several years. What I am seeing in manufacturing is that the cookie cutter products, high tech or not, are moving to either Asia or Mexico. The remaining products are being sold to customers who require a high level of customization on a very short lead time. The author has developed a system to accomplish this. He focuses not just on the nuts and bolts of the shop floor, but also on streamlining the support systems needed to achieve this level of service. If you are in high level manufacturing or corporate management, you need to read this book. If you are at a lower level, you will still be exposed to many ideas which you can incorporate into improving your service, to both internal and external customers, and reducing your lead times. I think it ranks right up there with The Goal as one of the most important business books written in the era of modern manufacturing.

QRM is a manufacturing strategy that focuses on speed throughout the manufacturing process. All efforts are focused on lead-time reduction. Unlike other lean manufacturing clones, QRM distinguishes itself with some unique approaches. While I'm not willing to accept everything the author is pushing, I certainly found some valuable insights.
The author does an excellent job of explaining the concepts, providing enough detail and examples to ensure the reader does not go away confused.
I thought this was a really good book and would recommend it to anyone involved in manufacturing, but even more so to anyone involved with engineer-to-order or make-to-order manufacturing.

A breakthrough new way of thinking!

Meanwhile JIT/Lean can not be implemented for highly variable product offer and variable demand larger than +/- 20% (when smoothing your p-schedule is not feasible anymore), the author describes a new path that can be followed (push-pull). The new 21st century's main objective is to compete - on speed. Reducing the lead times does not stop in manufacturing and the author gives a comprehensible overview how to proceed - including as well the softfactors making things work or fail.

Meanwhile JIT/Lean and the kanban-philosophy aims to reduce waste and the outcome is reduction in lead times and WIP (and improvment of quality), the QRM way targets the reduction of lead time. Many thinking from JIT/Lean can be used as well for QRM as cell manufacturing for flow, lotsize reduction/ setup (SMED) and preventive maintenance (machine availability) etc. Considering JIT/Lean systems are pull-systems, QRM-principles provide a robust framework as well for production systems where the variability of the product scope is broader and the customization is higher. Applying these tecniques will not only reduce your lead-times and increase your quality and service level, but as well simplify and improve your production system (sales and operations planning) and therefore finally improve your service level for deliveries. Reducing WIP goes hand-in-hand with the reduction of lead-times and a therefore a reduction of the binding capital (inventories/ WACC). Rajan Suri will even provide in his books the pitfalls of traditional management accounting and gives you strong arguments how to sell a company wide project to apply this new thinking.

This book is written for beginners as well as for experts in manufacturing and for further insights, the book Factory Physics (Hopp/Spearman) is strongly recomended. Reading and applying Japanese
tecniques as SMED, TPM and ZQC etc, were very useful to me to understand what tools do exist and can be used for QRM as well. Excellent software-packages for QRM are available, but I do strongly recommend to understand the fundamental and basic equations of QRM about manufacturing interactions, before applying this new tecniques (queuing theory etc.) - this will help you to analyse what improvements and where have to be targeted.

Meanwhile SCM-books do not provide the tools to improve operations in many companies, QRM provides you the required knowledge how to trim every single chain element in the supply chain and even provides a simple way to measure the performance of your suppliers (quality, cost and especially the delivery performance). This is the way to go for many companies, whether small or large scale - wherever JIT/Lean can not be applied or the company's culture might not be capable of adopting the Japanese way!