Fresh
Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski
After my weekly call with Gary Fleisher, I couldn’t stop thinking about throughput.
Not production speed or how the factory works, but throughput.
Let me explain the difference as I see it.
We can make a factory faster at cutting, assembling, or finishing modules and still fail to move more product through the system.
Where ERP Fits In
A factory doesn’t operate in isolation. Think about the journey…order → planning → ERP → purchasing → inventory → production → quality control → staging → transportation → foundation at the jobsite.
Every handoff is an opportunity for the system to slow down.
If the ERP doesn’t accurately communicate what needs to be built, the factory starts with bad information. If inventory isn’t synchronized with production, an efficient production line can sit waiting for material. If production gets ahead of staging or transportation, we may have simply moved the bottleneck somewhere else, as I’ve written about before.
Transportation is particularly interesting in modular. The finished product itself creates constraints that don’t exist in conventional manufacturing. A module can be completed, inspected, and ready to go, but if it’s sitting in a yard waiting for a truck, it isn’t fully through the system.