MANUFACTURER

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Terry Fisher doesn’t believe the length or difficulty of the work week has changed all that much over the years, regardless of technology. It’s just that time is more efficiently spent.

“The whole idea is to make more with less,” Fisher said. “I don’t think they’re going home more or less tired than 25 years ago.”

In his 30-year career, Fisher has risen from a machinist to factory supervisor and manager. Now vice president of operations for Brice Manufacturing Co. in Pacoima, Fisher oversees the company’s manufacturing of airplane seats and tray tables.

For manufacturers like Brice, time really is money. Any delays on the factory floor slow down the finished product, which means shipments go out late, putting orders at risk of being cancelled. At Brice, a subsidiary of Long Beach-based Ducommun Inc., the mandate is to build 400 tray tables and 40 passenger seats each day, assisted by high-speed assembly lines and computer-monitored machines.

“When you’re ready to make the final assembly, all the parts have to be ready together, at a specific moment in time,” Fisher said. “If we don’t have them ready, we lose money.”

Before final assembly can begin, parts must be built and fitted to specification in various stages. And how materials and human resources are allocated ensuring the most efficient means of building a given part is perhaps the biggest impact the computer age has had on manufacturing.

Prior to computers, if one part took 10 days to make, and another part took five, workers typically started the first part five days earlier. If more than one model of product was made, it was hard to account for where workers were in the various stages of production, and how soon it would take to finish the product. That led to confusion over how many raw materials to order, resulting either in too much or too little, and some people working while others waited.

“Now, we take all the resources, including our people, and define through the computer the cost of components, the lead time needed everything,” said Fisher, who himself works 50-60 hours a week. “We can schedule all those things to come together.”

When Fisher had his first supervisory job 25 years ago, he was responsible for 120 machinists and accounted for their production by walking up and down the factory floor and watching what they did.

Today, he manages 140 of the company’s 200-plus employees, but their progress is more closely monitored by computers. Employees work in units, with specific production goals for each product.

“Each day has to be scheduled so each work group has to get something done,” Fisher said. “When you’re planning in a factory, you do all the permutations of parts and human resources. When I was doing it on a clipboard and index cards, it was much more difficult to see the big picture. Now that it’s on computers, the cost cycle can be more effectively measured.”

Seeing the big picture means getting data readouts on how each work group and each employee is doing, and addressing whatever concerns there might be. Data analysis enables the company to know how long a given job should take and how much it should cost.

“You’re given a standard and you can compare that against actual performance,” Fisher said. “You can say, ‘This person is working at 50 percent efficiency, where the previous three jobs she was working at 100 percent efficiency.’ So now you can try to figure out what is different this time how do you help this person? What tools should be made available? The lower efficiency may be explainable.”

Computers also help manufacturers to achieve economies of scale by keeping tabs on inventory levels and what materials are in short supply. That can make a huge difference between finishing a contract on time or not.

“Airlines have stiff schedules,” Fisher said. “If they don’t have a seat on time, they lose money. If our seats aren’t sitting (in the planes), we’re facing a huge fine.”

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