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As a Senior Manager, Mr. Uttrachi participated in the expenditure
of over 1 million dollars with DeWolff Boberg and Associates, Management
Consultants. They worked closely with the production team and hourly
workforce and saved well over the expenditure. Each of the work teams
would report results summaries to the senior management team. The
analytical approach learned and used by many of the hourly workforce was
impressive.
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While Welding Materials and Process Laboratory Manager the charter
included Manufacturing Development. We worked closely with two
manufacturing plants developing innovative techniques and procedures to improve
quality (including developing a simple test production workers used to define
MIG welding wire cleanliness and maintaining chemical cleaning tank quality,)
reduce rework and scrap and develop new manufacturing procedures.
Statistical techniques were used to answer the
question often asked throughout by Production Managers (often those involved in welding fabrication)…”But it was working fine
yesterday and we did not change anything!” (The answer
often is, "You may not have a made a significant change but the manufacturing (or
welding) process variables were far-off centerline and you were close to a
disaster!")
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Participated in a complete change in a production operation to
Cellular Manufacturing. Gave hundreds of tours of the facility an encouraged
discussions with hourly work force. It's of interest to see their
perspective of why the Cellular Manufacturing was much better than the previous MRP
driven system. Benefits were very significant, including a substantial increase
in product quality and decrease of work in progress.
Outsourced a number of raw material supplies to in-house vendors and watched
while they managed inventory of their products far better than we had, often decreasing
total amounts by 80%!
The production workers relayed to the visitors
how frustrating it was to find with the previous MRP system a $5000 item being
assembled was missing the proper bolt! With Cellular Manufacturing a
representative from a hardware supply company kept all fastener bins at each
cell filled with several days needs. Instead of having thousands of
fasteners we didn't need in stock because the sales force didn't forecast the
future we had much less of the correct inventory!