I am very pleased to see that Bailey and I will assume most of the other large caravan manufacturers are preparing to restart production. We do need to get industry and commerce up and running as safely as possible to start the countries economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The short video by Simon Howard, Marketing Director at Bailey was interesting. It was certainly impressive to see how clean the assembly shop is now, all-be-it devoid of parts, people and part completed caravans. From a close scrutiny of some of the footage I could not see any specific production or quality control signage.
Based on what Simon tells us, they have been forced to think about how to assemble caravans and motorhomes whilst keeping socially distanced, and I was pleased to hear about the PRAG assessment process they have adopted to identify and reduce risky production steps. They have also had to go further and de-clutter the assembly area to allow the assembly workers enough space to maintain social distancing. Time will tell how effectively these measures will prove to be. There will be a learning curve, as its almost impossible to conceive of every human interaction that a work force evolves to effect an assembly of this nature.
They have finally decided to drop one of the old traditions seen across the industry of where suppliers parts were often passed to the production line still in their transit packaging, meaning the assemblers also had to unpack the items on the line side. SH points out one of the pitfalls of the tradition, and that is the amount of packaging material that some products have which clutters up the assembly area. What he didn't tell us was that the way some of these packages were opened was far from careful, and parts of appliances would be damaged or lost in the process. To make good the loss, assemblers often took parts from other stock appliances. This was passing the problem down the line.
I do wonder if the operators at the preparation stations will have sufficient training to ensure no small parts are over looked when an appliance is unpacked and put in the assembly line side stillage. I also wonder how the line assembler will cope if a shortage or incorrect or damaged part is dispensed to the line side.
This is beginning to look like smart production, and I wouldn't wish to belittle the work done to synchronise the factories internal logistics and materials handling to accomplish it.
Dusty dog mentions "Just In Time" I wouldn't go as far as that, because the company is still holding a large stock of production materials, where as JIT aims to reduce stock holding at the assembly site, and replace it with suppliers fulfilling and delivering orders within closely controlled time slots.
With a well implemented JIT system, the suppliers may deliver straight to the assembly line, and it might require several drops per day. Obviously there has to be a practical balance to this, but the aim is to move towards a lean manufacturing/assembly process with as little stock in progress as possible.
I hope this chance to reorganise the production process is a step in the right direction to improve product consistency, and make more customers happy first time.