Beacom School of Business Manufacturing & Technology Solutions

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Services

MTS offers a host of services designed specifically for South Dakota manufacturers.

 Manufacturing & Technology Solutions
Cellular/Flow Manufacturing -
Slash lead times and increase productivity by improving product flow.
When processes are balanced, the product flows continuously and customer demands are easily met.  Cellular/Flow Manufacturing is the linking of manual and machine operations into the most efficient combination of resources to maximize value-added content while minimizing waste.  The most efficient combination implies the concept of process balancing.  Only in a balanced process will the product continually flow.  As a result, parts movement is minimized, wait time between operations is reduced, inventory is reduced and productivity increases. 
 
  • Maximize value added time by each worker
  • Minimize part movement and inventory
  • Reduce lead times, cycle times and waiting times
  • Increase employee morale
  • Increase productivity and quality performance
  • Free up floor space
  • Improve efficiency of cross-training
  • Increase communication
  • Increase flexibility
Enterprise Assessments -
Provides a snapshot view of how you're doing and gives you a road map to improve your competitiveness, your performance, and your bottom line.
The Enterprise Assessment is the first step in our strategic, hands-on approach to help improve your company's performance. The assessment is a comprehensive on-site evaluation of your operations that appraises the capabilities and gauges the effectiveness of your business systems.  The purpose is to isolate which strategic and tactical business improvement services will help you to raise your performance and provide you with a customized action plan. 
 
  • Quick process
  • Benchmark against other companies
  • DIfferent set of eyes
  • Customized solutions
Executive Coaching -
Leverage your strengths and develop your executive team in ways that bring greater effectiveness and satisfaction to your organization.
The most challenging part of a lean transformation is motivating, inspiring, and effectively leading others. To achieve a real transformation to continuous improvement, it is essential that your management team have the confidence and ability to connect with others in a way that is positive, motivational, genuine, visionary, and trustworthy.  One-on-one executive coaching will equip your team with a customized action plan to achieve success in a Lean transformation or even if you are just managing change. 
 
  • Identify those things that will rapidly accelerate you and the lean initiative to higher success
  • Move past limiting beliefs and patterns
  • How to handle difficult situations or people
  • Skills needed to lead an enterprise-wide change initiative
  • Address weaknesses but focus on enhancing strengths
ISO Consulting -
Implement a systematic quality management framework.
ISO certification provides the framework for well-defined procedures for ensuring quality products.  The ISO quality standard is the most well known internationally quality in the world.   It tells other companies that you are a professional, quality-driven organization. 
 
  • Increased quality rate
  • Decrease returns
  • Increase customer satisfaction
  • Reduce rework
  • Sales tool
Kaizen -
Involve your workforce in the pursuit of eliminating waste! 
Kaizen means "continuous improvement."  Continuous improvement methodology uses lean manufacturing tools such as the 5S's of Workplace Organization and Standardization, Cells, Pull/Kanban, Set-up Reduction and Line Balancing, incorporating team empowerment, brainstorming and problem solving to rapidly make improvements to a specific product or portions of your processes. 
 
  • Immediate results
  • Involvement of the workforce
  • Visual, action orientation
  • Can use ongoing, once - learned concepts
  • Fosters communications
  • Creative vs capital investments
  • People think from a "business" perspective
  • Implementation smooth due to TEAM concept
Lean Certification Course -
A multi-level program recognizing tactical, integrative, and strategic application of standard Lean principles.
Designed by three organizations – the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and The Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence – this alliance established the standard for continuous improvement and lean practices.
 
  • Provides the opportunity for significant lean training and development
  • Is an established Lean standard recognized world wide
  • Develops internal Lean expertise to lead your continuous improvement effort
  • Knowledge + Experience = Lean Strength
Lean Marketing -
Achieve top line growth without breaking the bank.
A lean marketing is a step by step system that grows sales and profits by identifying and eliminating areas of waste in the marketing/sales process.  The system optimizes and leverages all current marketing assets/processes.  It shortens the sales cycle - gets products/services to customers as fast as the customer wants.  This approach to marketing can increase sales and profits, increase and speed up cash flow, all without having to spend any more money on traditional advertising/marketing strategies. 
 
  • Increase the number of prospects
  • Increase the conversion rate of prospects to customers
  • Increase the value or worth of each customer
Principles of Lean Manufacturing -
Meet demand while increasing productivity and capacity.
A lean enterprise produces more with existing resources by eliminating non value-added activities.  Manufacturers are facing increased worldwide competition and the stakes are high.  The winners in this competition work to eliminate overproduction caused by traditional scheduling systems and to only make what customers want when they want it.  Lean establishes a systematic approach to eliminating these wastes and creating flow throughout the whole company.  It also helps you develop and implement a long-term plan to streamline your operations for success. 
 
  • Reduce cycle time
  • Reduce inventory ·        
  • Reduce costs
  • Increase capacity
  • Improve lead times
  • Increase sales
  • Increase productivity
  • Improve quality
  • Increase profits
  • Increase employee satisfaction
  • Increase customer satisfaction
Lean Office -
Collect payment from your customers faster by shortening your Order-to-Cash time.
Lean Office helps companies with any type of administrative function to streamline information flow - the gathering, improving, movement and storage of information.  Just like lean for the factory floor, Lean Office focuses on reducing total cycle time - in this case, the time between orders being placed and when payments are received.  Typically 50% of cycle time is spent waiting for customer payment.  Lean Office can reduce your cycle time by streamlining beyond the shop floor and improving customer and employee satisfaction in the process.
 
  • Reduce paperwork process time up to 90%
  • Improve on-time performance up to 90%
  • Reduce work in process up to 90%
  • Reduce errors up to 50%
  • Reduce floor space up to 75%
Lean Transformations -
A true lean transformation requires engagement and understanding across the organization including leadership, middle management, and front-line workers.
Lean Transformation is a systematic approach to acquiring and applying a shared way of thinking within an organization. It does not start with a list of tools to change the way things are done. It starts with a change in the way everyone in a company thinks about what they do, how they do it and why it matters. It starts with an open mind and proceeds from there to permeate and change the whole business from the boardroom to the last link in the supply chain. 
 
  • Improved cash flow
  • Higher profitability
  • Higher productivity
  • Increased capacity
Plant Layout -
A properly designed plant layout is an important source of competitive advantage.
An effective plant layout is the heart of lean manufacturing.  The goal is to arrange people and equipment in a sequence that supports a smooth flow of materials and components through the production process with minimal transport or delay.  All plant layouts have a life cycle due to the changing of products, customers, technology, processes and continuous improvement. 
 
  • Increase throughput time
  • Decrease overhead
  • Increase on-time delivery
  • Reduce floor space requirements
  • Safer work environment
Policy Deployment (Hoshin Planning) -

Align your organization to achieve strategic breakthroughs!
If an organization wishes to exceed customer expectations and stay competitive it needs to employ strategic planning.  The Hoshin process is a systematic planning methodology for defining strategic objectives and focuses only on the critical few.  These objectives cascade down through the organization as plans are developed and goals set at each level of the company.  In effect, the goals of every individual should support the goals of the next person up in the hierarchy.
 
  • Provides a standardized strategic planning process that produces actionable plans
  • Involves all levels of the business in defining and achieving strategic goals
  • Divides strategic goals into measurable objectives with timelines.
  • Ensures participants are held accountable for achieving specific objectives
  •  Leverages Performance Excellence to meet strategic goals
  •  Enables the entire organization to focus on a shared vision of the future
Problem Solving Training -
Learn the fundamentals of Problem Solving the Toyota Way.
It has been proven that the most successful companies in the world have workforces' that excel in problem solving.  Lean, if applied properly, will force the awareness of problems. Thus, continuous improvement relies on the ability of your workforce to solve problems. This course guides you through a systematic flow of problem solving utilized by Toyota. 
 
  • Learn a common language for communicating activities and results
  • Build teamwork
  • Creates a standard for problem solving
  • Solve the root cause and not the symptom
  • Drive organizational learning
Pull Systems/Kanban -
Improve your cash-flow, throughput and competitive position.
Pull Systems/Kanban control the flow of resources in a production process by replacing only what has been consumed.  They are customer order-driven production schedules based on actual demand and consumption rather than forecasting.  Implementing Pull Systems helps you eliminate waste in handling, storing and getting your product to the customer on time, every time. 
 
  • Reduce overall inventory
  • Reduce work in process
  • Reduce order turnaround time
  • Increase customer satisfaction
  • Improve cash flow
Set-up Reduction -
Increase flexibility, reduce setup times and improve production flow.
Setup Reduction builds on the principles of the Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) system, developed by Shigeo Shingo, to dramatically reduce or eliminate changeover time.  Meet customer demands for high-quality, low-cost products, delivered quickly and without the expense of excess inventory. 
 
  • Respond to customer needs and schedules with more flexibility
  • Improve on-time
  • Decrease costs due to excess inventory
  • Increase line and machine capacity levels
  • Increase changeover accuracy
  • Reduce startup defects
Standard Work -

Employ the foundation of continuous improvement and sustainability.
Standard work is one of the most powerful but least used lean tools.  It adds discipline and accountability to the culture, elements that are frequently neglected but essential for lean to take root.  Standard work is also a learning tool that supports sustainability, promotes problem solving and team work.  Standard work is the key component to a company's success, which is satisfying the customer.
 
  • Reduction in variability
  • Reduction of injuries and strain
  • Reduced training time
  • Creates baseline for Continuous Improvement
  • Increase production
The 5S System -
Accelerate product and service flow—achieve and sustain clean, safe and organized workplaces.
The 5S System improves workplace organization and standardization. The 5S includes:
  1. Sort through all items and remove unneeded items
  2. Set in order remaining items, set limits, create temporary location indicators
  3. Shine or clean everything and use cleaning as inspection
  4. Standardize the first three S's by implementing visual displays and controls
  5. Sustain the gains through self-discipline, training, communication and total employee involvement
 
  • Improve quality
  • Achieve work standardization
  • Decrease changeover time
  • Improve safety
  • Reduce storage costs
  • Reduce cycle time
  • Reduce machine down time
  • Boost employee morale as well as work environment
Total Productive Maintenance -
Boost capacity and improve quality by increasing your equipment's life expectancy.
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a process to maximize the productivity of your equipment for its entire life.  TPM improves efforts in safety, quality, delivery, cost and creativity through the participation of all employees. TPM maximizes your equipment effectiveness, reduces downtime and improves quality and capacity. Typical manufacturing operations have experienced improvements in the following areas in a relatively short period of time (6- 12 months).
 
  • Overall equipment effectiveness (capacity) improvement of 25-65%
  • Quality improvement of 25-50%
  • Maintenance expenditure reduction of 10-50%
  • Percent planned vs. unplanned maintenance increase of 10-60%
Training Within Industry (TWI) -
Incorporate a proven program that give people the skills to succeed.
TWI is a dynamic program which uses a learn-by-doing approach, teaching essential skills for supervisors and team leaders.  TWI's core programs are Job Relations - building and maintaining positive employee relations; Job Instruction - training workers to quickly remember how to perform jobs correctly, safely and conscientiously, and Job Methods - improving the ways in which jobs are done.
 
  • Decrease absenteeism and employee turnover
  • Reduce training time
  •  Decrease rework
  • Increase productivity
  • Increase quality
Value Stream Mapping
Stop searching for the wrong problem.  Learn to see where the value truly is!
Value Steam Mapping (VSM) is a powerful tool to map the flow of products and information throughout the supply chain.  Begin the journey with the current state map and then plan your lean journey with the future state map.  VSM shows where you're going and how you're going to get there.  Based on your value steam map, you can streamline work processes, cut lead times and reduce operating costs.
 
  • "See the flow" of your value stream and wastes in the flow
  • View all products from a system perspective
  • Draw both material and information flows of your value stream
  • Draw a blueprint for lean transformation - the Future State Map
  • Prioritize activities needed to achieve the Future State - the implementation plan
Waste Identification -
Continuous improvement requires recognizing waste in your organization.
Lean is all about identifying waste and eliminating it.  The goal is to have a workforce that understands the eight wastes and are able to spot them in their workplace.  This class is 50% classroom and 50% in their work area, utilizing the Ohno circle teaching method. 
 
  • Continuous improvement sustainability
  • Engaged workforce
  • Effective suggestion system
  • Increased profitability