It's Not What You Expect; It's What You Inspect

摘要

In Puerto Rico, a textile manufacturer conducted an assessment of its growing materials handling costs. The company wanted to define the ideal storage structure for raw materials and work in process (WIP) to control the growth in handling costs. When the assessment began, the company used an off-site warehouse and storage trailers queued in the assembly plant yard. The mill and the assembly plant were 30 miles apart and WIP was transported, between the facilities, via truck trailers. Trailers with WIP scheduled for assembly within the next two days were sent directly to the assembly plant and staged in the yard. Other WIP was sent to the warehouse for storage until the product was scheduled for assembly. Storage was primarily for imported fabric arriving from the United States and WIP fabric en route from the mill to the assembly plant. Recent years had seen a 68 percent increase of on-hand inventory.