-
-
News
News Highlights
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueIntelligent Test and Inspection
Are you ready to explore the cutting-edge advancements shaping the electronics manufacturing industry? The May 2025 issue of SMT007 Magazine is packed with insights, innovations, and expert perspectives that you won’t want to miss.
Do You Have X-ray Vision?
Has X-ray’s time finally come in electronics manufacturing? Join us in this issue of SMT007 Magazine, where we answer this question and others to bring more efficiency to your bottom line.
IPC APEX EXPO 2025: A Preview
It’s that time again. If you’re going to Anaheim for IPC APEX EXPO 2025, we’ll see you there. In the meantime, consider this issue of SMT007 Magazine to be your golden ticket to planning the show.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Media kit
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
Cycle Time Reduction with WORK, Part I
October 27, 2015 | Steve Williams, The Right Approach Consulting LLCEstimated reading time: 1 minute

Summary
Lean, theory of constraints (ToC), quick response manufacturing (QRM), cross training, and SPC are powerful, tried and true methodologies for process improvement. However, these tools are rooted in high-volume manufacturing environments and don't always play nice in a high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) operation. The new WORK manufacturing strategy was specifically developed to overcome these shortcomings while capitalizing on their strengths.
Limitations of the Current Toolset
Lean
Lean is a collection of tools and methods designed to eliminate waste, reduce delays, improve performance and reduce costs. Lean focuses on eliminating non-value-added activities, as opposed to more traditional improvement efforts, which focus on reducing the time in value-added steps. The problem with lean is that many of the tools work best in a high-volume process that has very little variation in product mix.
TOC
ToC is a methodology that focuses on removing bottlenecks from a process through a series of five steps:
1. Identify the constraint
2. Exploit (improve) the constraint
3. Subordinate (align all activities)
4. Elevate (additional actions)
5. Repeat
The problem with ToC is that, by definition, eliminating one bottleneck creates another, and in a high-mix process the bottlenecks can change with the mix.
Quick Response Manufacturing
Quick response manufacturing (QRM), a cell-based strategy closely related to focus factories that was developed specifically for HMLV, has been gaining popularity over the past few years. The problem with QRM is that it works best when equipment sets from a number of sequential departments can be physically organized into small cells. This becomes problematic in operations that have processes requiring capital intensive environments like plating, clean room imaging, etc., where setting up a single machine in a cell is prohibitive.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of SMT Magazine.
Suggested Items
Supply Chain in the 21st Century
07/28/2015 | Steve Williams, The Right Approach Consulting LLCThe shift away from vertical integration has pushed the topic of supply chain management to the forefront of strategic planning for many manufacturers. This wide-ranging article talks about supply chain management, a brief history of supply chain innovation, managing supply chain risk, as well as presents the "7 Rights" of supply chain management.