DC Velocity - Comprehensive Logistics

specialreport
BY DAVID MALONEY, CHIEF EDITOR
WAREHOUSE SUPPORT OF MANUFACTURING
Cruze control
Producing a car a minute requires coordination,
split-second timing, and a lot of behind-the-scenes
support. Here’s how GM keeps the Chevrolet Cruze
assembly lines humming.
But beyond simply sorting and organizing parts, the real
value that Comprehensive brings is its value-added services.
For Lordstown, this includes producing subassemblies
of some of the major components for the Cruze. These
subassemblies will later be inserted directly into the car,
saving valuable time at the Lordstown assembly plant.
A PLAN FOR EVERY PART
General Motors (GM), Chevrolet’s parent company,
owns the parts processed at the Austintown facility and
orders all the parts from suppliers. The parts basically
fall into three categories. The first consists of bulk parts,
which are basic items that go into every Cruze built. The
second category consists of parts that differ depending
on the individual car, such as a door panel of a specific
color. The last category consists of parts that require
that something be done to them in Austintown, either
through the site’s kitting or subassembly operations.
GM provides Comprehensive with electronic data
files on each type of part it requires for the Cruze.
Comprehensive then creates an individualized plan for
handling that part based on its dimensions, weight,
origins, where on the Lordstown line it will be needed,
and the minimum/maximum number needed to
maintain desired levels of inventory. This information
is uploaded to Austintown’s proprietary warehouse
management system (WMS), known as Streme.
Processes in the Austintown building are then designed
around those particular incoming parts.
“We engineer the layout based on the parts—where
they will be stored, when they need to be picked, what
value-added work needs to be done on them, which dock
they will enter the building from, and which dock they
will ship from,” explains Trey Lyda, director of corporate
services, who is responsible for the engineering design
and layout at the Austintown facility.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GENERAL MOTORS
IN AN AUTO RACE, TECHNICIANS ON A PIT CREW
must carry out their tasks in a precisely choreographed
sequence to get the driver back out on the track as
quickly as possible. To do that, they have to have the
right materials ready in the right order and at the
right time. The same could be said of manufacturing
automobiles. Today’s complex assembly operations
require the same kind of coordination and timing to
keep manufacturing running at a high volume.
Take the assembly of the popular Chevrolet Cruze, for
example. Thousands of parts go into its production—
parts that have to come together quickly and in a
precise sequence in order for the assembly plant in
Lordstown, Ohio, to meet its goal of producing one car
per minute. Making sure the plant has all of the parts
it needs on time and in the right sequence is the job of
Comprehensive Logistics, a third-party service provider
that specializes in automotive logistics.
Comprehensive operates a 640,000-square-foot
distribution facility in Austintown, Ohio, which is
located less than 10 miles from Lordstown. The facility’s
sole responsibility is to feed parts to exact positions on
the Lordstown assembly lines. It receives, consolidates,
and deconsolidates parts from suppliers and prepares
them for just-in-time delivery to the plant. Currently,
85 percent of the parts used in the Cruze flow through
the Comprehensive facility—a total of 2,236 SKUs
(stock-keeping units).
Providing these types of consolidation and distribution
services is a specialty of Comprehensive, which
currently supports about 25 different auto production
plants nationwide. The company has been serving the
Lordstown plant for 11 years. Before it began providing
production support for the Cruze, the facility handled
parts for the Chevy Cobalt and Cavalier models that
were previously built at Lordstown.
WAREHOUSE SUPPORT OF MANUFACTURING
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Once a plan is in place, the facility is ready to receive
the parts. GM provides advance ship notices for parts
due to arrive at Austintown’s 54 receiving docks. Most
parts come in reusable plastic containers or metal racks
designed specifically for the individual parts they hold.
Receiving personnel scan the suppliers’ labels on
incoming containers and conduct a visual inspection.
The containers are then assigned a “license plate” in
receiving, which is scanned into the Streme system.
The WMS determines whether the items will be crossdocked or sent to storage areas, where they are stacked
on the floor or placed into pallet racks for short-term
storage. The storage areas are scattered throughout
the building—either close to the docks from which the
products will depart or near areas where the items will
undergo further processing.
Some parts, especially those from international suppliers,
arrive in cartons. These are either repacked into plastic
containers for delivery to Lordstown or sent to kitting
areas, where they are combined with other parts to form
kits (for example, a kit that includes the pieces needed for
an emergency tire jack set). The kits
are then placed into containers for
lineside delivery.
Austintown
also
provides
management services for the
containers and the metal racks. The
company gathers empty containers
at Lordstown and returns them to
the vendors. Right now, there are
114 different types of containers
within the container management
program, and the Austintown
facility handles an average of 14,000
empty containers daily.
START YOUR ENGINES
Production takes place 24 hours
a day, five days a week. As
parts are consumed in Lordstown throughout the
day, GM electronically delivers, or “broadcasts,”
lists of replenishment parts it needs for assembly.
Comprehensive has about 80 minutes to gather and
deliver bulk parts to lineside positions in the plant.
Most of these parts are already packed in containers or
loaded onto pallets, so it’s a matter of gathering them
and placing them onto trucks that shuttle them to the
Lordstown facility.
The Austintown facility has 42 outbound docks, where
containers are loaded onto the trucks in reverse sequence
to the order in which they will be used on the
production line. Falcon Transport Co., a sister company
to Comprehensive, provides the transport services using
standard 53-foot trailers.
As for the tracking of materials throughout the day,
the Streme system provides GM with full visibility into
the status of Austintown’s parts processing operations
as well as products in transit. GM, in turn, shares
information on inventory on hand at Lordstown so
that Comprehensive can prepare for what parts will be
needed next. Lordstown typically keeps only about four
hours’ worth of materials on site.
“Streme provides us with an animated representation
of everything we have in inventory and in process in real
time,” says Steve Olender, vice president of information
technology at Comprehensive.
Many of the parts require specific sequencing to
match the build order of individual cars. In the case
of these parts, workers receive picking directions via
radio-frequency (RF) units. If, say, a door panel pad
is needed, the RF device will first tell a worker which
part to pull from a rack of panels. At that point, the
system prints a part label, which the worker scans and
applies to the part. The RF device then tells him or her
which slot in the 12-slot shipping rack to place the part
into so that the items will be in the
proper sequence for assembly. The
worker next scans the slot in the
rack to confirm that the right part
was placed there. Conducting four
scans for a single pick might sound
like overkill, but Comprehensive
believes it’s necessary to ensure
ultra-high levels of accuracy.
CHANGE IS A WAY OF LIFE
Most people would be surprised at
how much continuous improvement
goes on in automotive manufacturing.
Engineers are constantly tinkering
with the cars, making incremental
improvements. As a result, there are
about 150 part changes every week
that Austintown has to address for Cruze production.
“The car gets better every single day. It is all part of
continuous improvement, as we all want to make a better
product,” notes James Kriner, the Austintown plant manager.
Sometimes, though, car companies will decide it’s
time to make wholesale changes to a particular model,
which happened this year on the Cruze. On Feb. 8, GM
began producing a completely re-engineered secondgeneration Cruze.
In preparation for the changeover, the Lordstown
operation shut down for five weeks for retooling. Among
other decisions, Comprehensive had to determine how
to handle each of the new parts for the Cruze, as only
161 of the 2,236 parts remained unchanged from the
first-generation car to the second.
Among the changes made during the retooling
process was the relocation of two of the subassembly
lines at the Austintown facility. These subassembly
operations represent a major value-added service
that Comprehensive provides to GM. At Austintown,
workers run five production lines that pre-assemble
specific sections of the Cruze vehicle. The Streme
software directs the manufacturing process, acting as a
manufacturing execution system.
Subassembly lines include the so-called CFRM line,
Electronic and single printed copies for distrubtion with permission to Comprehensive Logistics Co.,Inc. from DC Velocity
March © 2016 Agile Business Media, LLC. (lifetime web posting)
WAREHOUSE SUPPORT OF MANUFACTURING
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
which assembles the condenser, fan, and radiator
module (this was one of the subassembly lines that was
relocated). Another subassembly line builds the front
vertical, which includes the front suspension system
and front disc brakes. A rear vertical line assembles the
rear suspension, rear axle, and rear brakes, while a front
horizontal line produces the engine cradle.
Perhaps the most complex of the subassemblies
Comprehensive builds at Austintown are the
“headliners,” which are the interior linings for the cars’
roofs (the headliner subassembly line was the other
line to be relocated). Though that might not sound
like a particularly complicated
component, there are actually 96
different variations of headliners
for the Cruze model, depending on
color, the type of visors, whether
the car will have a skylight or
sunroof, and the lighting and
electronics packages.
As soon as it determines what
headliners it will require, Lordstown
transmits a broadcast message to
Comprehensive describing the
specific permutations for each
headliner it needs and the sequence
required for delivery. Nothing
is built at Austintown until this
message is received, as the facility
operates strictly on a pull inventory
system. Austintown then has two hours to assemble the
headliners and deliver them lineside to Lordstown.
Once the subassembly line swings into operation,
large display dashboard screens on the production floor
track the units’ progress. Some of the work is carried
out by robots, which handle tasks like applying glue.
Fixed cameras and sensors measure assembly angles and
tolerances to assure that every fastener is in place and all
actions have been completed properly.
Finished headliners are placed into racks designed
specifically for them, with each rack holding 19
headliners. The production is carried out in reverse
order so that the items needed first in Lordstown are
placed into the racks last.
Overall, Austintown prepares about 1,600 truckloads of
parts each week for the Lordstown assembly operation.
Comprehensive is responsible for making sure that all of
the parts are delivered on time, at the right place, and in
the right sequence for the GM plant to turn out 1,260 cars
daily, or 280,000 in a typical production year. Or to put it
another way, the 3PL’s job is to ensure that all operations
remain solidly on Cruze control.
specialreport
As part of the overhaul, GM made wholesale changes
to its sourcing strategy. Some 70 percent of the parts in
the 2015 model Cruze came from international points,
with only 30 percent sourced from North American
suppliers. For 2016, that is reversed—70 percent North
American and 30 percent international.
Sourcing parts closer to home allowed GM to cut
leadtimes while creating flexibility within its supply
chain. The changes also affected Comprehensive, as it
was able to reduce the amount of buffer stock it keeps
on hand. Since international inventory often takes as
long as 30 days to travel by water, the facility holds
about 10 days’ worth of inventory
of internationally sourced parts.
For domestic products, the facility
carries just one to four days’
worth of buffer stock. As a result
of the change, Comprehensive no
longer needs two satellite buildings
formerly used to house buffer stock.
While it was carrying out the
retooling, Comprehensive decided
to rearrange some of the storage and
processing areas at the Austintown
facility. It added narrow-aisle
storage and moved some of the
storage and staging areas closer
to the docks through which the
products enter or exit the facility.
This has reduced forklift travel time
within the building (the facility operates a fleet of 62
electric forklifts supplied by Clark Material Handling).
“It’s the detail we go into for every single part. We study
our standards for time and distance to provide added
productivity and to improve our processes,” Lyda says.
The new generation of Cruze also requires that more
parts be sequenced for specific builds than was the case
with previous models assembled at Lordstown. “It affects
our lineside presentation, so we looked at our own layouts
to make our work more effective,” Lyda adds.
When it comes to process perfection,
the sky is the limit.
More and more automotive and industrial OEMs are turning to Comprehensive Logistics to support
their high-velocity, just-in-time manufacturing environments. Regardless of complexity, our highly
engineered approach and control methodology perfect millions of process cycles and the movement
of millions of parts through our world-class synchronous manufacturing-support operations, creating
efficiencies and reducing costs.
• Warehouse management
• Parts sequencing
• Sub-assembly
• Kitting
• Repacking
• Sort/rework
• Container management
• Small lot parts management
• Bulk parts metering
• Cross- docking
• Transportation management
800-734-0372 Ext. 642 • solution@complog.com • www.complog.com