| Ford Motor Company’s
new Dearborn Truck Plant contracted TPT to
provide Industrial Engineering support for
the launch of the F-150. The current re-balance
period was closing, new versions of the F-150
truck were arriving, and the first implementation
of the new OIS/eQPS software was being rolled
out. In order to handle all of this work,
the Industrial Engineering (IE) Department
submitted a project to hire three (3) Senior
TPT Engineers to help.
Two of the TPT Engineers were assigned
to work on identifying opportunities for
re-balances. This task included reviewing
the current time studies, conducting new
studies where necessary, creating To/From
lists, attending trials for work moves and
updating the data in the Ford APT software.
The third TPT Engineer was assigned to
work on the OIS (Operator Instruction Sheet)
launch. This included updating the APT data
for the process sheet allocations, “linking”
the time study elements to the process sheet
elements and providing progress reports.
The project also required TPT to support
the other Engineers (both TPT and Ford)
in the use of the APT software, and provide
feedback to Vehicle Operations personnel,
software developers from Compuware and various
plant organizations.
The TPT Engineers enabled the Ford I.E.
Department to stay on schedule with their
re-balance task and the OIS launch. The
TPT Engineers’ backgrounds and experience
helped to identify re-balance opportunities
that were not obvious. In addition, the
OIS launch required an in-depth knowledge
of the Ford software system in order to
understand how the implementation would
affect plant operations. The expertise of
the Productivity Team engineers in MODAPTS
studies and line rebalancing enables their
success with Ford Motor Company in all phases
of car and truck assembly.
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