Job Shop Leaders

By Torrence Smith

This book is about job shops. Inside is a combination of stories and practical tips from my experience. It's not theory. This is how I lost money, made money, kept my job or got promoted. These are all the things I dug through the literature trying to find answers to. 

Job shops can be many different types of businesses. Factories, distributors, and government offices could all be considered job shops. Job shops are all those places where the work you do, and the volume of work varies from day to day, even custom design businesses where every piece is unique. 

There were seven challenges I struggled with that I couldn't find adequate answers to. We talk about it here by addressing: controlling lead times, eliminating knack points, enlightened spending, solving dynamic capacity, getting to full kit, order unevenness (Mura), and Minimum Viable Process (MVP).

If you work in high volume mass production this probably isn't written for you. If you've never lost a night's sleep trying to understand how your business works, put this down. If you like big words and highly technical descriptions I'm not your guy.

This book is for the searchers.

I'm looking forward to this. Come on inside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Torrence Smith
• Release date: Jan 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386610991

Book preview

Job Shop Leaders: Small Wins From a Factory Life

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Torrence J. Smith

Copyright © 2015 Torrence J. Smith

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

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This book  is dedicated to my wife Barbara, mom Janice, dad Bobby, brother Troy, my three kids Cristian, Caitlin, and Maya, and my extended family.

Additional thanks to Nathan Harris, Dr. Sheila Ackerlind, my fellow veterans, and all the people I’ve met along the journey

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Job Shops vs High Volume Production

Short Run Print Company

Lead Time Blitzkrieg

Knack Point Bloodbath

Return on Invested Capital

Spring Maker & Light Stamping Plant

Capacity Conundrum

HVAC Fabrication & Assembly Plant

Full Kit Leaders

Oilfield Assembly Plant

Before Heijunka

Minimum Viable Process

Afterword

Notes

About the Author

Acknowledgments

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I’d like to acknowledge my wife, Barbara as the first reader of this text. She is also the owner of Telework Design which did the cover artwork for this book. You can contact her through her website www.teleworkdesign.com.

Introduction

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Rob Halford, lead singer for Judas Priest attributed their distinctive sound to his childhood in Birmingham, England. Iron foundry steam hammers pounded within walking distance of his school, lending the driving base beat that would fuel his career. Its’ fitting that manufacturing gave birth to heavy metal; factories have a rhythm of their own. All the people coming and going, taking customer orders, and running equipment, they thrash like a heart.  They hope and breathe. I didn’t always feel this way.

Curious and driven, I left the Army at twenty-seven hoping for the kind of work that would fill and challenge me, that ideal opportunity that would combine art and science.  So time serving as an infantry officer was followed  by a series of factories.

That first job shop gave me the thrill of new love, that maybe this was it. I’ve worked for the government, factories, and sales offices and I can tell you that each of these could be considered a job shop. The type of work we did and the volume of work varied from day to day.  It created the weightless fear sensation of riding a roller coaster.

Some of the most competent and intuitive job shop practitioners were small business owners. Their grasp of how such businesses worked was so instinctive that when asked, they drew a blank on how to explain. Their actions and decisions were macabre to me, the new guy. I was on the outside looking in.

If you work in high volume mass production this probably isn't written for you. If you've never lost a night’s sleep trying to translate popular management theory into the zoo that is your workplace, put this down. This book is for the searchers.

This journal is not the be all, end all. I’ve consumed