ABSTRACT
Machine shops vary as much as the work they handle. Some machine shops have fairly steady demand products but most are job-shop type environments where lot sizes can run from one piece to hundreds. In most machine shops, the best place to start is with a group-tech matrix. The goal of the group-tech matrix is to determine what, if any, families exist and to what extent of the parts they will cover. Once managers do a group-tech matrix and determine a cell can be created, they do a process-flow analysis on the parts in the cell to make sure they have the steps in the correct order. The Yamazumi board has different uses and varies widely by company. In general, it visually displays the load on each machine or machining center compared to the available time. Sometimes it is used to compare cycle times for operations to the takt time.
