The Production Line Doesn't Start In The Shed

I was so keen to get into the office when I was on the tools. I had learnt every part of the process in the shed, from cutting studs to pressing trusses. I couldn’t wait to learn more about how they actually got to the factory in the first place. I remember the first week I was in the office, I was right at the edge of my comfort zone. It took me half a day to work up the courage and make my first phone call to a builder about some window head heights.

When I was in the shed, I thought moving into the office to be a detailer meant I was removing myself from the production line. I’d have time to do the job right and I would have all of the information I needed whenever I needed it! Everyone who has tried to detail a job, or schedule one, is laughing at the screen right now. At least the fantasy was nice while it lasted. Being a detailer just moved me from one part of the production line to a different part of the same production line. And detailing wasn’t even the start of it.

The production line doesn’t start at the saw, it starts way upstream. Let’s look at why.

The factory workers mental model: Your production line starts when the job makes its way in to the factory.

It looks like this:

The job gets cut by the saw, manufactured on the jigs and presses, stacked and stored in the yard, and delivered on the truck when it gets called up. As we discussed last week, the press determines the output of your shed and is the constraint you manage the business around. After all, that’s how you pay for your whole operation. This model of the production line was what I thought the production line at a truss manufacturer looked like. It was nice and neat and started when the job got to the shed. How does the job actually get to the shed though?

This is the first step upstream and the next step I came across when I first moved in to the office. If the saw operator is cutting a job, that’s because it came across one of the detailers desks first.

Because detailing is part of the production line, it also has to become a slave to the constraint. Whatever that press can produce, plus the appropriate amount of buffer, is what the detailers have to produce also. The detailers feed the saw, and the saw feeds the press. So what feeds the detailers their work?

Estimators have a big job. They have to get a job to 95% detailed in a fraction of the time that a detailer fully designs a job. Like the detailer and the saw, if something got to the detailers desk, it got to the estimators desk first.

The production line is starting to get a few more steps in it now than I originally thought. So how much work does the estimator have to do to feed the press all of the work it needs? Bloody heaps. This is where the funnel really widens out. The amount of production points or EQA or board feet that an estimator has to chew through to feed the press the amount that it needs can be huge, depending on the businesses conversion rate.

If we say the rough industry standard is a 30% conversion rate, then the estimator has to quote somewhere in the region of 3.5 times the presses capacity just to strike even. That’s not what we want though, we can’t forget about the buffer! So maybe the estimator has to get through 4 times the presses capacity, or more!

How does the estimator get jobs on his desk though?

Now the funnel is massive. The conversion rate between leads coming into contact with the business through sales and advertising, and those leads actually sending in a job for quoting, could be in the single digits. Now the production line looks like this.

Ads and sales are the first place your business comes into contact with potential new customers, and it’s the start of the production line. The inputs here compared to the outputs of the factory are massive. There are so many prospective customers that come past your ads or that your sales rep buys coffee for, that never see the estimator’s desk.

So let’s put this into a bit of perspective.

Shed A

Shed A is finishing up a job on the saw and can’t see another one there to be started. The sawyer wonders into the office to see where the next job is. In the office, the detailers have been flat out trying to keep up with the shed and have fallen behind. The guys back in the shed are finishing up and have decided to strap the jobs themselves, because there isn’t another job to go on with. And besides, the truck is waiting to be loaded so it can get out on the road to deliver it. The press sits idle for another hour and a half before there is some material to start making trusses again.

Shed B

Over in Shed B, the Sawyer is finishing up a job and had a look on the production sheet for the next job, he can see it on the saw’s PC and loads it up to start cutting. Once he has a few trolleys of the new job behind him he sees the press finishing up the previous job. He goes and helps the yardy strap up the job and move it out of the way before the press gets the first truss out of the new job. When he gets back into the shed, he can see that there is an empty trolley waiting for him at the saw, so he fills it up with more cut truss members ready to be turned in to a truss. When that’s dome he gets the ancillary bag done for the job the press just completed.

In the office, the detailers are working away on the jobs that they have been assigned. One of them is pulling their hair out because getting information out of some builders is like pulling hens teeth, and it’s holding him up from even starting a job. While he’s upset, it’s not a showstopper. The detailing team are about a weeks worth of work ahead of the shed, which is there required buffer. Meanwhile, the estimator is chewing through the quotes coming in. She had about 5 more to do before the end of the day to reach her quota but there is about 20 more to do in the inbox that have come in from the sales rep. The manager is monitoring all of this and making sure every part of the process is maintaining its required buffer between them and the next process down the line.

Which one would you rather be working in? I know I am making shed B sound like it is truss heaven on earth, but there’s a lot that factories can do to make their shed run a whole lot smoother.

If you don’t consider all of the steps in the production line of a truss to actually be the steps of the production line, you end up with starved saws and presses. Maintaining that buffer all the way through the system, subordinating all of those processes to your constraint, is essential to your business. The press is your constraint, and your production line begins at the ad.

Thanks for tuning in this week! got anything to add? reply and let me know!