Truss Production Scheduling Problems?

There is nothing like the scheduling of orders to bring out the worst in people. The timely delivery of orders naturally creates a division between salesmen and production. Management normally plays the role of referee, with a tendency to favor the salesmen. Management and salesmen have the common goal of maximizing sales to increase the salesmen’s commission and profit to satisfy management’s goals. Production has basically one goal of working steadily to produce the orders at a reasonable cost. This process can cause a great deal of problems when production cannot process the orders requested.

When the orders are failing to meet the timeline established, what are the most common problems affecting the process? Each organization experiences the same type of problems, but handles them differently when scheduling becomes an issue. Strangely, this problem with scheduling of orders all falls into the same pattern. Each company I have dealt with feels it is somehow unique, and that it is always the “other” department’s problem. If you want to resolve this issue in your company, then look at the list of four prime issues affecting scheduling.

1) Scheduler Cannot Say No: This is by far the worst culprit that creates the most problems. The scheduler knows that he has overbooked the production levels, but either he cannot tell the salesmen, “No, you cannot have it when you are asking for it,” or he tells them no and the salesmen goes running over to management, and management tells the scheduler, “Make it happen.” I have personally have been on both sides of this issue.

If management cannot understand that production has limits, then this is a dead issue. Your company will never face up to the reality that you cannot be everything to everybody. What will happen, if it hasn’t already, will be bad customer relations because you will fail too many times when your production hits its ceiling. I will talk about production issues later, but for the moment you should understand that the production output history should give you a clear understanding of what is actually happening rather than some theoretical level you expect of them. If you’re the manager, it is a difficult thing to admit, but sometimes you may be causing the scheduling problems.

When I did the scheduling, I always told the salesmen if they wanted to move an order up, they had to find something to push out. Keep in mind that if an order is being moved up and one out, it cannot be too late for production to be affected by the moves. Think of the order process in a production facility like a train leaving the station. Each of the orders is represented as a car being towed by the locomotive. If you want to replace one of the cars, it will affect all the other cars if the train has already left the station.
can not say NO!

2) Scheduling the Maximum Amount of Production Every Week: Are you not allowing for any problems or rush orders? History will show you what your production levels are averaging each week. Let’s say your limit is 100 units per day. Does your schedule show that you are booked for four weeks with 510 units every week? Yes, orders will be delayed after they have been scheduled for whatever reason, but you are not allowing for rush orders or production problems. We all make mistakes, and some orders have to be put ahead of others, but your scheduling does not allow for this. Equipment breaks down, and people do not show up to work, so you have to allow for this fluctuation in production levels. Have you ever realized how much easier it is to call a customer and ask if he wants his order more quickly than he was told than ask if he minds a delay? Try it a few times, and you will sleep better at night with happy customers.

3) Inaccurate Unit Measurement Used to Gauge Production Levels: Trusses are unique because of their complexity. I have used board footage, number of pieces, sales dollars, lineal footage, and man-hours. By far, the best unit of measurement is man-hours estimated. See Time Standards webpage for understanding of man-hours. (Man-Minutes, R.E., or S.U.); Using man-hours will actually help you better understand whether you have been estimating the labor properly for each order. Each of the other types of measuring units fluctuates too much depending on the order types. If your market is relatively the same type of production runs, then it will not be as apparent. But if your market creates a huge variation in truss types, then your production foreman will gladly tell you how inaccurate the other types have been. He has been mentally adjusting what he could do given the truss types.

Think about it: How is the sales dollars measurement going to allow for discounted sales price and lumber cost variations? Is the board footage that different on a garage with common trusses versus a hip style? Lineal footage does not take into consideration the complexity of truss types.

4) Production Level Fluctuates Too Much: Believe it or not, I have found the level of production to be the least of the issues that affect the scheduling process. Depending on the set-up of the production facility, the level of production will be affected more by equipment failure and employee absenteeism.

If your shop is set up so that you need a forklift to move material to the saws, tables, staging yard, and finally to the trucks, what do think happens out in your production facility when a forklift breaks down? Do you track how much your equipment is costing you in lost productivity? I have found that a simple layout of the shops will affect the level of production, but this does not contribute to fluctuations in productivity. There is more “cost” per piece of equipment than the cost of parts and purchase for every single equipment piece in a shop. Whether the equipment is brand new or an antique, its reliability makes a huge difference to constant levels of production.

Some companies experience high turnover rates with their shop employees. Well, I’ll be honest; too many companies have a high turnover rate for their shop employees. The type of work these shop employees do is very labor-intensive, and they are not highly compensated. This issue of keeping and training production employees is a whole problem in itself. For the purpose of scheduling, what do you think is happening to productivity consistency if you are not training and retaining effective workers? If the absenteeism is rampant, how is your shop going to be consistent in its level of production on a day-to-day basis? When you have an effective building team of three people and they lose one individual, how much productivity do you think they lose when a brand new employee is brought in? It is not uncommon for the crew with a new guy to lose 20 to 40% in the first week. It is a slow and costly process to train new employees, and usually companies have little understanding of how much a new employee costs them. Let’s assume a crew of three builders can build approximately $2,500 worth of trusses per day. A 25% drop in productivity costs 3,125 Sales Dollars per week. Please take the time to read the “Incentive Program for Your Shop” web page; this may help you with employee productivity and employee retention rate.

So now we have covered the four reasons that affect accurate scheduling. Of course, you may have a combination of problems affecting your scheduling. Talk it over as a group to resolve these issues. You should include the general manger, shop foreman, scheduler, and head salesman – at the very least. It will be difficult to keep the emotions of the employees in check because the scheduling is what causes so much stress for everybody. Once you have the initial meeting and implementation, schedule a follow-up meeting to see how effective the changes have been. You may find that it will take three or more meetings to get it right. Once your company is scheduling properly, you will have fewer stressed employees and a more satisfied customer base.

Industry News Alert!!

Are you serious about understanding what is going on in your shop at any given moment?
Do you want to be able to track the productivity of every group and/or individuals?
Do you want to know exactly, at any given time, what a work order’s progress is?
Do you want to really know what each and every order’s man-hours are?

To find out how, click this link… Truss Shop Labor Tracker

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