Follow-up: real control of production profitability

               Follow-up or expediting is that department of the production-control procedure that regulates the progress of materials parts through the production process.  However, it is the agency charged with the responsibility for the production order after they are dispatched; it is nevertheless closely interrelated with dispatching.

            Follow-up indeed serves as a catalytic agent to fuse the various separate and unrelated product activities into the unified whole that means progress. It concerns production with the reporting of production data and the investigating of variances from the predetermined time schedules.   As such, follow-up endeavors to see that the promise is backed up by performance.  More industrial and other purchasers are turning to delivery-performance reports to measure the production reliability of their suppliers.  Those reports may be prepared weekly or monthly, but either way, cumulatively, over a while, they show the number and percentage of each supplier's shipment which were late as received compared with delivery promises.  The record will become one of the factors taken into consideration in awarding subsequent purchasing contracts to competing suppliers.   It will lead to increased emphasis on making shipments” on time “and focusing attention on follow-up methods as the means to improve delivery performance.

    Types of follow-up:

           The expediting of purchased materials is as will be noted in the section on procurement, basically the responsibility of the purchasing department. The main requisition upon which the purchase of the materials is based usually specifies the date on or before which the material is required, and it then becomes the duty of the purchasing department to ensure that the material is received to be available by that date.  Though certain orders for material or subcontracted items may be extremely vital to the maintenance of delivery promises to the customers, whereas other orders may simply be required to maintain a normal bank of raw material or parts in anticipation of future customer orders, the condition may change that the delivery he required that the delivery date of certain material be advanced.   Though it is often advisable for the follow-up section of the production–control department to follow outstanding material requisitions placed with the purchasing department which is deemed vital to the maintenance of preplanned schedules.  The follow-up may be accomplished most simply, by filing one copy of the requisition in a daily follow-up file according to the date the material is due to be delivered.  Delivery information obtained from the purchasing department through this type of follow-up can be transferred to the stock records to supply a ready cross reference for the source of information.

     Work in progress:

         The expediting of work in progress in a layout consists basically of checking the materials required for that progress and recording the production accomplished for comparison with the preplanned schedules. Since material enters the production line, it cannot easily become sidetracked. But when the material is a relatively simple matter daily production record chat will reveal any delays in production items along the line. Thus, by the use of the principle of exception, late items can be given different attention. The same cannot always be said for the follow-up of work in job-order manufacture.  In case the products are diversified and several orders are running simultaneously in the plant, the other sequence can be (changed deliberately to meet emergency conditions.  Hence, follow-up expediters in conjunction with the foremen must continually re-examine the progress of orders at various operations so that any delayed materials can be given the green light through the rest of the progress and the lost time can be made up.   As part of follow-up activities of job-order manufacture, a record is usually made of the start and completion of each job or operation, as well as of the pieces made and those which are defective.  Allied with such records are those showing the idle time of people and of machines which thus reveal lost time.

          Follow-up of job- order manufacture system, a follow-up clerk is assigned to follow-up or father a particular product through all its operations and all departments from the raw material to its completion.  However, where the follow–up is organized according to the department, a follow-up clerk expedites all products through a particular department, and when each article moves to another department the responsibility for its control is placed in the hands of another follow-up clerk.

        The fathering system usually operates best when the product represents a complicated assembly of the product can be completed, for under this system one person is responsible to follow all the parts. But the document to this system lies in the fact that frequently several follow-up clerks, each interested only in expediting his or her particular material, hound a certain foreman for the simultaneous use of the same machines and equipment.

          However, for less complicated products, it is often advisable for the follow-up to be organized by the departments so that one follow-up clerk is left with the responsibility of advising the foreman on how to make the best use of his facilities. When considering large completed products, the assembly and erection as well as the subsequent servicing of the product may of necessity take place at the purchase's plant. In such erection, type is often required for machinery and for other highly technical articles where the follow-up clerk must be thoroughly acquainted with the field, and with the troubleshooting and servicing of the product after it goes into service.

        Preventing production delays:

                The follow-up clerk is concerned with the delays that creep into industrial production. He learns about the delays through analysis of the production reports and personal observation.  Corrective action should not be taken after the trouble has occurred but also anticipate and prevent before it develops. Prevention is needed at the right time than anticipated to cure where delays in industrial production are concerned. The common causes of delays for which the expediter can help administer the remedy are as follow:

i.                     Errors in planning:  such errors of production management whereby equipment is scheduled with work beyond its capacity to produce, setups are exclusive as the result of scheduling uneconomically small lots, or workforce demand has been under-estimated. The follow-up clerk, by his closeness to plant conditions, can discover such errors and have them checked before serious damage is done.

ii.                   Lack of materials, and tools:   the problem of this may be derived from delivery failure which could have been prevented by closer follow-up by the purchasing department or production expediter.

iii.                  Equipment breakdown:   preventive maintenance and duplication of vital pieces of equipment help in seeing that prompt transfer is arranged to the alternative or stand-by “equipment” as breakdowns do occurs.

iv.                 Excessive rejections: materials scrapped at any point in the process more than the scrap factor allow subsequently cause a shortage in the finished items. The follow-up clerk is instrumental in setting in motion the machinery to replace the defective material and in expecting the replacement lot so as not to delay the production of the finished goods. 

v.                   Out-of-balance in–process inventories:  in case the bank of materials build-up to a point of excess between some operations with resultant starvation of material between other operations, slight spurts or lag in production can cause the operator to run out of work.  The follow-up clerk must then take steps to level the float to a point where idle- worker and idle- machine time from this cause is eliminated.  

         Trends in product flow-control:

   Customers are demanding faster, more prompt deliveries of manufactured items. Organizer is demanding better, more positive control of production, with attendant lower costs. How is the industry responding to this demand?

      However, the firm has found that the best manufacturing performance can be realized by integrating control of all manufacturing endeavors, from the unloading of raw material to the shipping of the complete products.  This vertical control parallels the trends towards vertical integration of processes, plant layout by-products, and automation of effort in the field.  

      In addition, the industry is making ever-increasing use of mechanical equipment in production- control systems as the medium for complete, accurate, and speedy two-way information on which the control process depends. It is also a way to reduce the clerical costs of this control.

         Many of this equipment has already been touched, duplicating machines for preparing forms, commercial control boards, and communication equipment for dispatching and follow-up.