Shared Equipment Management for High-Mix, Low-Volume Manufacturing

If Two or More of Your Cells Have to Share One Machine, This Book Is for You. A heat treat oven. A plating line. A paint booth. A CNC machining center. Maybe two cells share one machine. Maybe every cell in the plant flows through it. Either way, you cannot duplicate it, you cannot eliminate it, and the daily scheduling fights are killing your flow. In Lean manufacturing, this is called a "Monument." Traditional Lean consultants will tell you to eliminate shared resources and buy dedicated equipment for every cell. In a high-mix environment, that advice will bankrupt you. You cannot buy your way out of this problem. You must manage your way out. What This Book Does: This book is not a textbook. It is an implementation guide. It shows you how to build a nervous system of buffers, signals, and rules around your constraint to prevent starvation and flooding. You will replace heroic efforts and daily expedite meetings with boring, predictable, profitable consistency. What You'll Learn & Build: Each time through this book equals one managed constraint. You will finish with: A diagnostic test to determine if you have a reliability, scheduling, or true capacity problem The Two-Buffer System: An input buffer to prevent starvation and an output buffer to protect downstream cells The Ticket System (CONWIP) to cap Work-In-Process and eliminate the "Phantom Backlog" 6 proven scheduling strategies, including Time-Slicing, FIFO with Priority Rules, and Campaign Wheels The Water Strider protocol: Standard work for the single most important material handling role on your floor The Gatekeeper Checklist and Release Rules to stop incomplete kits from clogging the queue The Monument Scorecard to track Effective Utilization, Expedite Rates, and Buffer Health A complete 60-Day Implementation Roadmap to roll out the system The output is a fully managed constraint that dictates the heartbeat of your entire plant. How This Fits in the Lean Line Pro Series: This is Book 7 in the Lean Line Pro Deep Dive Series. Book 1 – Product Families: Identify which products belong together Book 2 – SMED Quick Changeover: Reduce setup time to enable flow Book 3 – Flexible Cell Design: Design a production cell that flows Book 4 – Heijunka / Mixed-Model Scheduling: Level-load production to customer demand Book 5 – Material Flow & Pull Systems: Kanban, supermarkets, and pull signals Book 6 – Standard Work: Process documentation for high-mix environments Book 7 – Shared Equipment Management: Strategies for managing machines shared across multiple cells (This Book) Book 8 – Designing Flow Around Batch Processors: Preserving single-piece flow around the one station that cannot flow Books 1–6 build lean flow inside your cells. Book 7 solves the problem BETWEEN cells — the machine they all have to share. Book 8 solves the problem INSIDE a cell — the batch processor that breaks flow at one station. Different problems. Different fixes. Each book is designed to be usable on its own, but works best in order. Written by a Practitioner: Based on 20+ years on real shop floors. No buzzwords. No academic fluff. Just the exact templates, checklists, and scorecards you need to run the system. Stop negotiating for machine time. Stop expediting. Manage your constraint and unlock the hidden capacity that is already there.