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MANUFACTURING CASE STUDY

The following case study¹ demonstrates how the integrated Cockpit application directly impacts management's day-to-day decision-making process. This case study focuses on a specific instance of how a VF product manager uses the Cockpit to identify and confirm a potential yield issue and proactively take the necessary steps to correct the problem.

Figure 1: Cockpit user's customized front page

Figure 1 shows a typical Cockpit product manager's customized front page with thumbnail icons displayed. These icons represent favorite views the manager would want to see on a daily basis, providing insight into business operations. Each manager specifies which thumbnails to display by selecting from a standard list of defined views, or a list of personalized views previously created and saved. With one mouse click, the manager can select any of the thumbnails to examine the full active view displaying data from the most recent OLAP cube update.

Figure 2: Manufacturing-specific customized views of "VF Forecast, Yield by Products" and "VF Forecast, Yield by Output"

Scrolling down the front page, the manager reviews the VF Forecast, Yield by Products view. Focusing attention on detail, the manager sees that the VF is not meeting yield goals.

From a manufacturing perspective this means that the VF will either miss committed output or require more product starts to stay on target. The manager elects to drill-down on yield to further analyze current activities and clicks the right thumbnail, VF Forecast, Yield by Products to display the active view of the data shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Drill-down in Active View to reveal Yield trending for specific product

Shifting the time frame to the current quarter, the graph displays a downward trend. With the ability to easily change time frames and indicators and dimensions to elaborate on the current problem, the manager deselects all products except ProdX, which seems to be presenting the problem.

Figure 4: Expanded data view revealing increased product yield in Technology Development (TD) sites

In Figure 4, data were expanded so that they could be viewed by site to determine if this downward trend is unique to a site, or if the problem is spread across the entire VF. By deselecting other sites, the active view can be simplified to focus on specific sites highlighting the yield anomaly. Analyzing apparent indicators, the manager concludes that all High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) sites are displaying a downward trend while Technology Development (TD) sites display an upward trend. This prompts questioning the engineering manager to determine what has changed since the last quarter and whether TD is developing some new Best Known Methods (BKMs). Electing to analyze the data further to elaborate on possible options, the manager modifies the time frame of the chart a second time to provide a larger window. Looking at prior quarter performance to analyze how yield was trending for the product, the manager evaluates that ProdX was steadily improving as expected.

Figure 5: Enlarged time frame view revealing steady improvement with significant spike in Q2 yield

The manager now knows, as expected, that ProdX yield at HVM sites was improving as the product matured. At quarter end, however, all yields at HVM sites went down, but TD remained constant and even showed a slight increase.

Looking at a yield trend, several options are available to the manager:

• Determine course of action to improve yield.

• Consider modifying forecast (lower) to avoid over-commitment.

• Maintain the output forecast and either over-start units or lower Throughput Time (TPT) to compensate for lower yields.

Figure 6: Modified view to "VF Output, Actual vs. Scheduled" to reveal Yield-Output correlation

Electing to correlate the previous trend, the manager switches to VF Output, Actual vs. Scheduled displaying the same time period as the previous yield view. The analysis validates that while yield trended up through the end of the quarter, the VF consistently beat the output schedule.

When yield trended down, at the beginning of the new quarter, the VF consistently missed the output schedule. The manager concludes that yield and output are positively correlated. With this new information, management can take adequate action to improve yield.

Through the Cockpit's interactive live charts and drill-down capability, a correlation that could have taken days, even weeks to identify was detected in a timely manner, demonstrating the benefits of the Cockpit as a decision support system.

To facilitate early notification of similar yield-related problems, the manager can request that the application monitor the yield indicator. The manager can set a personalized threshold and be notified if yield is outside the acceptable range. This early notification will shorten the problem-solving cycle time without requiring constant indicator monitoring.