The sky's the limit
Source : The Manufacturer
Published : 26 Sep 2005 17:35
Executives at Rogerson Kratos share plans for expanding the aircraft instrumentation manufacturer’s use of lean with Cynthia Garber
Formed in 1958 in Pasadena, CA, Kratos was acquired by Rogerson Aircraft companies
in 1984. Already a leader in aircraft instrumentation, Rogerson Kratos pioneered itself into highly integrated AMLCD Display Systems. Today, Rogerson Kratos leads the way in providing an outstanding product line of instruments, active matrix liquid crystal display systems, and other aerospace products which can be found on the most current world airliners, helicopters, and military aircraft.
The company’s modern facilities integrate all phases of design, engineering, production, and quality assurance and provide customers with responsive service and innovative solutions. These proven benchmarks have helped keep Rogerson Kratos at the top of the cockpit instrumentation systems industry. The company’s Electronic Flight Instrumentation Systems (EFIS) and Integrated Instrument Display Systems (IIDS) have won world acclaim as reported by many of the world’s aviation publications and news press.
Fred Lucas, director of customer support, adds that the company is now very heavily involved in the manufacture of Intheairnet—the next-generation in-flight aircraft entertainment and information system. This system not only offers in-air television, stereo, compact disc, and VCR entertainment but Internet capabilities as well.
“Our market is worldwide. Some of our major customers include Bell Helicopter, Boeing, and the Italian manufacturer Agusta. We have customers in Spain, Indonesia, and Czechoslovakia. Our workforce is currently between 70 and 75 people, many of whom have been with us for 10 years or more,” Lucas says.
Because many of the products the company manufactures are often sold in small quantities, Kratos has had to respond to a number of challenges.
“We manufacture at least 250 different products and, in some cases, we sometimes sell in quantities of only a couple at a time. Because of that we had to develop an organization that is really nimble and able to move quickly and we have a very good MRP (Material Resource Planning) system that is the backbone of what we do,” says Ron Tosta, vice president of manufacturing.
This system, Tosta continues, keeps track of planning, inventory, and material transmission. “This way we know what comes in and what goes out and we are able to put our customer purchase orders on the system so we know what to manufacture and ship,” he says.
The computer has made all the difference at Kratos. “We would not be able to do what we do with the handful of people we have without a good reliable computerized system like we have,” Tosta says.
With a total of about 43,700 line items with different part numbers within its structured system, careful planning is of utmost importance and the company is now planning to make even further use of lean.
“Obviously with the number of items we manufacture, we need to be really good at planning and purchasing. That’s because when you are supporting all of these different products at the same time, you may not be ordering a lot of parts of one type but you are trying to order and schedule many different parts in small quantities,” says Lucas. “The backbone of what we do is really being able to manage parts, assemblies, documentation, etc. So in a sense we have to move resources based on where the demands are in relationship to what products need to be built and shipped.”
And that’s where lean can make the difference according to Syed Rizvi, manufacturing engineer, who has been trained in six sigma techniques and is currently putting together an ambitious project in this regard. “We currently use some lean manufacturing techniques but we need to move into an all encompassing lean technique in building our products. We are in the early stages now and I am working on a proposal to bring before higher management with recommendations for all my ISO 9000 projects,” he says.
The company is tightly teamed with its suppliers. And, to further streamline the operation, additional changes are in the works including moving quality assurance to supplier’s sites. “That way we will make our suppliers responsible for the inspection of the material that they deliver to us,” Jim Oliver explains.
It is anticipated that these changes will have positive results. “Presently we are very good at small quantity batch manufacturing,” says Jim Oliver, quality director, who agrees that the company’s future will depend on its transitioning over to higher volume lean manufacturing.
Larry Smith, president, is also anticipating more good things to come from the further implementation of lean. “This is a case where strategically we have decided that our value added is going to be in assembly, test, and design. We design all our own products now so we consciously decided to outsource a lot of the things that would have been done in-house. For example, circuit boards. All of our current boards are outsourced to sub contractors,” he says, adding that some of the sub assemblies will be brought in completely, built, machined, and finished. “Basically, what we will do is bring in the major pieces, assemble, test, and ship them,” he says.
The success of Rogerson Kratos can be largely attributed to the fact that it has adapted to the times and the demands of its customers. “Twenty years ago we were doing probably double the amount of sales volume. But we were doing it with a different type of product, a lot more labor, and a lot more work in-house,” Smith says. “We’re able to cope by becoming a very lean organization and outsourcing a lot of sub contracts and assemblies to local suppliers. Now we’re looking forward to rebuilding at higher production rates with one of our sister companies.”
Knowing what it now knows about lean, Rogerson Kratos plans to do some additional re-organizing to make the company even leaner than ever. “We’ll organize differently and still do a lot of outsourcing. Once we have the volumes, we will set up work cells, go to more of a JIT pull type scheduling system, and do more dock-to-line inventory techniques where we will bring in material from our suppliers to deliver straight to the cells,” says Smith.
