The Product Wheel Handbook: Creating Balanced Flow in High-Mix Process Operations

Product Wheel is a scheduling strategy that has practical, well-proven methods for enabling operations managers to find the optimum balance between inventory, operating cost, and customer service, particularly useful in high-mix process operations. They do so in a way that increases throughput to either increase revenue or reduce operating cost while providing a structured, repeatable manufacturing platform that reduces plant floor chaos. DuPont, Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, and Litehouse Foods are just a few companies that have used the product wheel concept to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage.

Breaking down a fairly complex design process into manageable steps, The Product Wheel Handbook: Creating Heijunka in High-Mix Process Operations, 2nd Edition walks readers through the process for designing, implementing, and maintaining the product wheel technique. It describes each step in detail based on a case study taken from actual practice.

This book:

• Provides clear, practical guidance on how to balance the trade-offs encountered in implementing any scheduling strategy
• Describes how product wheels satisfy the lean goal of production levelling, Heijunka, in a much more comprehensive way
• Defines the cultural foundation necessary for smooth product wheel design and implementation
• Describes how product wheel design places appropriate emphasis on people engagement and empowerment as well as on process and technology

Many of the steps in wheel design described in this book are not new. What is new is a proven road map explaining how to apply them in an integrated, holistic manner, starting with a thorough understanding of material flow and equipment performance coupled with product characteristics and requirements. The result is a disciplined scheduling structure that will allow you to spend less of your time firefighting and more time in higher valued, more productive work. More importantly it provides your organization with a stable platform to deal with abnormal events in a less stressful and more logical manner.

This second edition benefits from the additional perspectives, experiences, and insights gained through the past thirteen years of product wheel design and implementation in a wider range of companies and industry sectors.

• It describes some of the advanced scheduling systems that have evolved over the past dozen years, how to take advantage of them, and when traditional tools like Excel are still appropriate and the better choice
• It details a dozen examples of the successes and benefits that various companies have achieved with product wheels. The Supply Chain Vice Presidents and Operations Directors describe in their own words the impact that product wheels have had on their operations

Peter L. King is the president of Lean Dynamics, LLC, a manufacturing improvement consulting firm located in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Prior to founding Lean Dynamics, Pete spent more than 30 years with the DuPont Company, in a variety of control systems, manufacturing systems engineering, Continuous Flow Manufacturing, and Lean Manufacturing assignments. That included 18 years applying Lean Manufacturing techniques to a wide variety of products, including sheet goods like DuPont™ Tyvek®, Sontara®, and Mylar®; fibers such as nylon, Dacron®, Lycra®, and Kevlar®; automotive paints; performance lubricants; bulk chemicals; adhesives; electronic circuit board substrates; and biological materials used in human surgery. On behalf of DuPont, Pete consulted with key customers in the processed food and carpet industries. Pete retired from DuPont in 2007, leaving a position as Principal Consultant in the Lean Center of Competency. Recent clients have included producers of sheet goods, lubricants, fuel additives, polyethylene and polypropylene pellets, salad dressings, potato and corn chips, pharmaceuticals, vitamin tablets, and cheese sauces and puddings.

Pete received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, graduating with honors. He is Six Sigma Green Belt certified (DuPont, 2001), Lean Manufacturing certified (University of Michigan, 2002) and is a Certified Supply Chain Professional (APICS, 2010). He is a member of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, APICS, and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He served as president of IIE’s Process Industry Division in 2009 – 2010.

Pete is the author of Lean for the Process Industries – Dealing with Complexity (Productivity Press, 2009, 2019), several other books published by Productivity Press, and a dozen published articles on the application of lean concepts to process operations. He has been an invited speaker at several professional conferences and meetings.

DuPont™, Tyvek®, Sontara®, Kevlar® are trademarks or registered trademarks of E. I. D duPont de Nemours and Company. Mylar® is a trademark of DuPont Teijin Films; Dacron® and Lycra® are trademarks of Koch.

Jennifer S. King is an Operations Research Analyst with Regulus Group, analyzing operational impacts of emerging FAA technologies and developing cost and performance models to support airline investment decisions. Prior to that, she spent five years with the Department of Defense developing discrete event simulation models to assist the army in setting reliability requirements for new platforms, and analyzing performance of weapon systems alternatives. Her prior publishing experience includes editing textbooks and developing mathematics problems and solutions for ExploreLearning, and co-authoring the first edition of this book and Value Stream Mapping for the Process Industries.

Jennifer has degrees in Mathematics and Psychology from the University of Virginia, and a Masters degree in Operations Research from the University of Delaware. She is a member of INFORMS.