The document provides an overview of the operations at Anoplate, a metal finishing company. It describes the key processes from receiving customer orders through planning, scheduling, racking, and plating. Issues identified include long wait times between receiving and racking, missed on-time delivery commitments, inaccurate projected start dates, and preferential treatment of premium customers. Recommendations are made to streamline processes, improve planning and scheduling software, track rack locations, and set more accurate projected dates.

1. FASTRACK
A M O G H H A J A R E
A M R I S H B A S K A R A N
S A N K A L P D E R E
V I B H A S N A R A M B A L
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2. Introduction
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• Anoplate was founded by Milt Stevenson, Sr., in 1960 to serve a growing need among what
was then a very small, locally based machine shop and tool industry.
• Operates from a 104,000 square foot facility, single location in Central New York State.
• Offers metal finishing services including plating of various metals like copper, nickel,
chromium, various types of anodizing of light metals, conversion coatings such as
phosphating, dry film lubrication.

3. Receiving
 Receives the order from the customer through various sources (UPS, FedEx, freights, customer drop off,
Anoplate trucks) and inputs the order details into the system
 The order should contain the actual parts as well as paperwork involving customer and other basic details
 The actual parts are allotted to a specific area and the paperwork is forwarded to the Planning phase
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4. Planning
 Planning phase deals with planning & printing out the plating process flow outline
 The paperwork from receiving phase is forwarded to planners
 There are 5 planners out of which 1 planner is only supposed to do “Repeat” orders also known as
“OrderEntry” orders
 Each planner generates a ”Blue” which contains planning details.
Key Information in Blue:-
1.Customer Details
2.Plating processes and its sequence
3.Rack photos of repeat orders
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5. Scheduling
• Here the plating schedule is set for each order according to SBUs
• There are 4 SBUs in Anoplate which handle different metal finishes
• The flow leaders in each SBU receive the “Blue” generated in the Planning phase as input which have the
job specifications
• A Scheduling Software is utilized to evaluate process availability and Anoplate’s OTTP metric (projected
completion date) is generated here
• The output of this process is a “Traveller”
Key information in Traveller:-
1. Work-order No.
2. Racking method
3. Inspection Info
4. Masking Info
5. packing and shipping method
6. Work-order quantity
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6. Racking
According to the date set for the job to be scheduled, the required parts are inspected and then racked for
the plating process.
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7. Shop-Order No
Receiving
PO NO. & Other Info.
Parts
PO NO. & Other Info.
Holding Area
Scheduling
Blue
Parts
Validator
Racking/Inspection
Parts
Traveler
Traveler
Plating
Process
Work-Order No
Planning
Blue
On Time to
promise(OTTP)
date
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The Flow

8. Define
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9. Define
Problem Statement:
Customer orders have to go through a long
wait time before the plating process and its
effect is felt by missing Anoplate's On Time
To Promise(OTTP) date, that is, the date
promised to the customer on which the
completed order will be shipped back.
Goal:
To improve process & current cycle time
from receiving an order to racking the job.
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10. Measure
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11. Measure
Value Stream Map
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12. Pareto chart of overall problems encountered in Planning:-
• The highest percentage of problem
is of customer failing to send the
required info to plan their order.
• Internal clarification can be with
Anoplate Customer Service
regarding quoting, engineering
department, custom rack maker,
masking dept. etc.
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Measure

13. Pareto chart of number of problem orders based on order type:-
• The data shows that among all problem
orders, about 70% are for FirstRuns and
rest for Repeat orders.
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Measure

14. Repeat orders planned by OrderEntry planner vs. other planners:-
• Only about 56% problem
orders were planned by
OrderEntry person.
• This shows that the other 4
planner’s time is being used
by Repeat orders as well as
FirstRuns.
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Measure

15. Pareto chart of problems encountered in Scheduling:-
• The Pareto chart shows
that Excess workload
account for 48.4% of the
problems and Process
availability contribute
towards 19.4% of the
problems.
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Measure

16. Pareto chart of problems encountered in Racking:-
• The Pareto chart shows that Bad
Planning account for 30% of the
problems and damaged or bad parts
contribute towards 23% of the
problems.
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Measure

17. Analyze
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18. Errors forwarded from Planners checked by Validator
• During a 7day data available from the
measure phase, there were 87 errors caught
from 786 orders checked.
• Error Rate=12%
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Analyze

19. Rejects categories within our scope
• In past 6months Anoplate had 761 reject
orders created. Among those 761 orders, 211
rejects were found to be within our scope.
• About 40% of these rejects were 100% rejects
which means these orders were completely
sent back to customer for evaluation.
• We found that the average time wasted in first
case is 8.6 days (median=6.5 days)
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Analyze

20. Improve
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21. Improve & Control
Recommendations:
 Online customer information form
 Improved Planning software
 Inspect order packages before planning
 Add capabilities to scheduling software to include masking and tank information
 Scheduling software should reflect real time data
 Track location of racks
 New Metric for true performance
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22. Specific Customer Information
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23. Recommendation & Implementation
Recommendation:- Online customer information form.
Online Form:
1. Gather data to successfully receive and plan an order, eg. PO#, finish etc.
2. Take input from planners and engineering department to finalize list of mandatory details and
optional details
3. Make the form fields data entries as specific to possible, eg. Dropdown menu, only accepts numbers
in field etc.
4. Pilot test the form with your old loyal customers and get feedback.
5. Implement the practical feedbacks
6. Educate all your customers of these new way of accepting information
7. As more of your customers use this successfully, you make it a policy to accept information
electronically only
Online Customer Form
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24. Streamline Planning Process
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25. Recommendation & Implementation
Recommendation:- Streamline Planning software
Implementation:-
1.Validate the current flowcharts from planners as well as engineering department
2.Create a streamlined flow as shown in example
3.Ability to prepopulate fields by use of R1
4.Addition of error proofing that prevents order being planned if incorrect information
5.Pilot test on few finishes and capture the errors from planners
6.Improve the software based on feedback
Planning Software Form
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26. Inspect before Planning
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27. Recommendation & Implementation
Recommendation:-Inspection before planning
Implementation:-
1.Add the ability in the software in receiving data entry to show if order needs to be
inspected based on customer historic data using color coding (green-bypass inspection,
red-inspect)
2.If particular customer has a bad historic data then check every order send by that customer
(i.e FirstRun and OrderEntry). However for customers with good historic data, bypass the
inspection. Inspect every order send by new customer to build historic database.
3.Have the receiver put a sticker on the box to be inspected and write the work-order
quantity. Put the paperwork in the box.
4.Have inspector check the parts using sampling plan datasheet
5.If parts are good , put paper work back into the receiving desk and put the inspected stamp
on the box
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28. Implementation
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29. Rack Tracking
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30. Recommendation & Implementation
Recommendation:-Rack tracking system
Implementation:-
1. Specify colors for each SBU and color coding each specific SBU rack on the handle
2. If 2 or more SBU can use any particular rack then color code it with 2 or more colors resp.
3. Train the operators that racks must be put back in the right area
4. Keep count record of racks available for each SBU and digitalized it into the software
5. Set a maximum use time for each type of rack and inspect its usability when it reaches that threshold
6. If any racks becomes unusable then the count record should be updated
7. Add the ability to link the type of racks, number of racks required, location of racks for particular
order in planning & scheduling paperwork automatically
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31. Implementation
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32. Interesting findings
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33. Friday OTTP more prone to missed:-
FridayThursdayWednesdayTuesdayMonday
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5
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Data
Interval Plot of Monday, Tuesday, ...
95% CI for the Mean
The pooled standard deviation was used to calculate the intervals.
• We found that statistically setting
the OTTP on Friday is more prone
to miss and it increases the missed
number of days by 3
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34. Two-sample T for Premium customers vs Not Premium customers
N Mean StDev SE Mean
Premium customers 8270 2.59 2.77 0.030
Not Premium customers 12582 2.70 3.45 0.031
Difference = μ (Premium customers) - μ (Not Premium customers)
Estimate for difference: -0.1101
95% CI for difference: (-0.1950, -0.0252)
T-Test of difference = 0 (vs ≠): T-Value = -2.54 P-Value = 0.011 DF =
20039
Scheduling to Racking time compared for P vs. NP:-
• The number of days taken from Scheduling
to Racking for premium and non-premium
customer is different. This proves that there
is a tendency of pushing forward premium
customer orders.
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35. Inaccurate projected start date:-
• SBU 3 has a high 81.3% of incorrect estimations
compared to a small 18.7% of correct estimations.
• SBU1 has correctly estimated the start date 58.5%
of the time compared to 41.75% of incorrect
estimations.
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