Quick Response Manufacturing
QRM can play an important role in companies with a large variety of products, relatively small series, and a highly variable demand. The overarching focus is on reducing throughput time in all phases of production and office operations to help you compete in a rapidly changing market environment
Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) is the name of a company-wide strategy developed by Dr. Rajan Suri, which gives priority to reducing turnaround time in all aspects of business operations. QRM complements other improvement methods, such as Lean and Six Sigma.
QRM is based on four core concepts:
The power of time: MCT
The MCT (Manufacturing Critical Path Time) is the most important performance parameter within QRM, which brings together and visualises all the different times, from placement of an order to delivery to the customer, and thus reveals the largest levers for throughput time improvement.
Organizational structure: autonomous cell
QRM transforms traditional departments into a network of QRM cells that are used throughout the company, with ownership and autonomous teamwork as supporting factors.
System dynamics: free capacity
By incorporating reserve capacity (via mostly small investments) and managing the utilization of released capacity (via POLCA maps) the system dynamics (interactions between materials, people and machines) are organized in function of minimum turnaround time.
Organization-wide application
Because QRM is a company-wide strategy, it also includes material planning, purchasing and supply chain management, warehouse management, office activities and development of new products.
