At its Milwaukee, Wis. facility, P&H Mining - recently renamed to Joy Global - faces huge planning and manufacturing challenges. As a producer of large customized mining equipment, the company makes many low-volume, high-variability parts that require a complex manufacturing process. Their solution to the difficult scheduling issues - POLCA, QRM's production control strategy.
In the May/June issue of APICS magazine, Kathy Pelto (Project Manager) and Bob Mueller (Factory Manager) of Joy Global describe their POLCA journey and provide an industry practitioner's perspective on some of the challenges they encountered along the way. In the POLCA system, cards circulating in loops between cells provide a visual signal indicating capacity downstream. It also provided valuable information on capacity constraints. "The POLCA visual signal identified deficiencies in process immediately, so that we didn't lose time in the manufacturing process," said Paul Diedrick, POLCA co-champion.
POLCA significantly improved operations performance and lead times for cell parts are down 75 to 80 percent. The company also saw WIP decrease by more than $3 million and output of critical gearing components increased by 253 percent. Read the full article in this months APICS magazine (subscribers only).
