Half day Workshops

These five 4hr. workshops work through the basic concepts of inventroy control in a manufacturing business.

APICS Workshop Series

Basics of Inventory Management

For most organizations, inventory is one of the more visible and tangible aspects of doing business. Beginning with the management of suppliers delivering raw materials to goods in various levels of completion in the production process and management and delivery of finished goods in the distributions channel, each type represents money tied up until the inventory becomes purchased products. The workshop provides a broad overview of basic concepts and good inventory management strategies.

Cycle Counting

In this workshop, the participants will learn how to implement or improve a cycle counting program and what the real purpose of cycle counting is: finding and fixing the causes of inventory errors. Also included are several methods for selecting items to count, using correct accounting techniques, and reconciling any outstanding transactions. In addition, the participant will learn various reporting methods to illustrate the results of the cycle counting program to employees and management.

Distribution Inventory Management

This workshop focuses on the distribution network model and its objectives, activities, and distribution inventory management decisions and includes interactive exercises to present the fundamental concepts associated with the distribution environment. It is appropriate for management, sales, purchasing, forecasting, materials management, operations personnel, shipping/receiving, and any other supply chain function tangent to the distribution activity.

Material Requirements Planning and Bills of Materials

To effectively use a material requirements planning (MRP) system, it is essential to understand how bills of material (BOMs) are structured and how MRP calculates requirements. This course includes instruction and exercises so students can practice these important concepts. From structuring simple BOMs to creating phantom bills, modular bills, and super bills, the participant will learn many ways to use BOMs, how to calculate material requirements, and some common action/exception messages that MRP systems frequently include.

Physical Inventory

This workshop will discuss what works and what doesn't as the participant learns the essential preparation steps and activities to perform in advance. These activities include everything from cleanup and sorting to working with auditors. The best physical inventories require the best, most thorough, preparation. The participant will also learn how to keep the physical inventory under control once it starts. From tracking of tags to weigh scales and facility maps to handling recounts, this course guides the way.

Lean Enterprise Workshop Series

Series of Half Day Workshops

APICS Lean Enterprise Workshop Series Overview

The APICS Lean Enterprise Workshop Series is an in-depth seven (4 hour) workshop study of the lean principles that companies need in order to meet the demand of today’s manufacturing and service environments. In the workshop series, participants will follow Murphy’s Toys, a fictitious company, through their lean transformation and learn principles and methodologies along the way. The series offers numerous interactive activities for participants to maximise learning and retention, master lean terminology, and create a lean implementation plan.

Workshop 1 – The Lean Enterprise: Introduction

This workshop offers an introduction to lean from the perspective of a manager at Murphy’s Toys, which is a fictitious company studied throughout the series. Participants will learn about the basic philosophy of lean, the steps to a lean transformation and the House of Toyota framework as well as how to determine product families, correct waste and quantitatively assess an organisation’s lean status.

Workshop 2 – The Lean Enterprise: Lean Culture

Lean is a people and culture driven process. In this workshop, participants will explore the effects of a lean implementation on employees, brainstorm ideas for implementing change management at Murphy’s Toys and learn the importance and stages of teams in lean environments. An important lean tool, the kaizen, or team-oriented continuous improvement event, will be introduced and participants will study a problem at Murphy’s Toys, completing a kaizen report. Murphy’s Toys will choose the product family to use in the pilot of their lean implementation.

Workshop 3 – The Lean Enterprise: Value Stream Mapping

Value stream mapping is a valuable tool for viewing processes and determining potential areas of improvement. Using standard value-stream mapping icons, participants will draw a current state value stream map of the injection moulded plastic toy production line at Murphy’s Toys. Participants will then learn what makes a value stream lean, after which they will apply this new knowledge as they develop a future state map.

Workshop 4 – The Lean Enterprise: Stability and Process Improvement

In this workshop, participants will learn how to achieve demand stability and improve processes. Concepts covered include load levelling, mixed-model production, buffering, causes of variation, standard work, total productive maintenance and an introduction to six sigma. Participants will explore methods to reduce setup time through activities.

Workshop 5 – The Lean Enterprise: Just-in-Time

Now that Murphy’s Toys has stabalised its processes, it needs to focus on scheduling production to meet customer demand. This workshop covers determining customer demand, line balancing, continuous flow, implementing pull, scheduling with heijunka and the use of kanbans. Through a hands-on activity, participants will explore the use of a heijunka system to meet customer demand.

Workshop 6 – The Lean Enterprise: Measuring

Traditional measurements are not working well for Murphy’s Toys as they transform to a lean enterprise. In this workshop, participants will compare and contrast traditional to lean measurements and their resulting behaviours. A review of lean accounting includes such topics as standard cost vs, value stream profit and loss statements, the financial impact of lean improvements, target costing and lean decision making. Participants will examine the lean metrics that Murphy’s Toys can use.

Workshop 7 – The Lean Enterprise: Sustaining

Now that Murphy’s Toys has undergone a lean transformation, it must implement long term changes to sustain the gains made. These include implementing lean design, analysing failures and ensuring on-going quality control and continuous improvement. In this workshop, participants will perform a failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), analyse a problem using the six sigma DMAIC tool and create a lean implementation plan to take back to their organisations.

Murphy’s Toys

Murphy’s Toys is a fictitious company created for the APICS Lean Enterprise Workshop Series as an on-going case study for the series. At Murphy’s Toys, complaints are high, quality is low and demand is building for toys. Each workshop in the series illustrates one step in the story of Murphy’s lean transformation. Participants will learn lean principles through activities that include studying Murphy’s corporate data, mapping their value streams, levelling their production and measuring their success.

Half day Workshops

These six 4hr. workshops cover the whole cocept of Constraints Management

APICS Theory of Constraints Workshop Series

Constraint Management Overview

This workshop introduces participants to the basics of constraints management: the business system and various types of transformation processes (production, projects, and supply chain); the goal of business system; definitions of CM terms; and the types of constraints. Theory of constraints performance measurements and simple drum-buffer-rope concepts are introduced through Socratic exercises and games.

Critical Chain Project Management

This workshop introduces participants to the basics of managing a single project using constraints management. The four-step process of scheduling a project using critical chain scheduling is illustrated and compared to traditional project management. Several major problems existing in project environments are presented, and solutions are illustrated using games and exercises. The concepts of strategic buffering, project decision support systems, and multiproject scheduling using critical chains are introduced.

Performance Measures

This workshop introduces participants to the problems using traditional performance measurements. Cost-world measurements of managerial accounting versus the throughput-world measurements of theory of constraints are illustrated through the use of the evaporating cloud technique of TOC thinking processes. A case study on production batch sizing is used to illustrate the focus of cost-world thinking versus the focus of throughput-world thinking. The relationships of drum-buffer-rope scheduling and buffer management to each step of the five-focusing steps are introduced.

Production Management

This workshop introduces participants to the production paradigm of constraints management. Simple games comparing balanced capacity and constraints-based capacity production environments are used to illustrate the impact of statistical fluctuation and dependent events on line throughput. The control points in a production environment are described, and how to plan and control these points using the drum-buffer-rope scheduling methodology is illustrated. VAT analysis and buffer management are described.

Supply Chain Management

This workshop introduces participants to the basics of managing a supply chain using constraints management. Topics include the process of identifying the constraints (internal and external) of supply chain, chain performance and flow concepts, the core problems and basic solutions for different links in a supply chain, and the dilemma of supply chains—holding too much inventory versus too little inventory.

Thinking Processes

This workshop introduces participants to the theory of constraints thinking processes. These powerful logic tools provide skills to answer the three basic questions facing a manager today—what to change, what to change to, and how to create the change without creating resistance. An in-depth discussion of the use of the evaporating cloud technique is presented. This tool is used to solve problems by uncovering and challenging assumptions related to the way we view the problem. (Recommended for those new to TOC.)

Answers the three key questions:-

  1. Why do I need Inventory in the first place?
  2. How much to I need?
  3. When do I need it?

Inventory Essentials for Small Manufacturers

One Day Workshop

Couse Agenda