Watchmaking - The 6 key planning priorities and best practices to address them effectively.

1- Establish a touch-up management process

Issues

• Quality is paramount in watchmaking; it is the very essence of the industry, therefore, any defect is absolutely prohibited.

• In order to minimize defects, manufacturers multiply quality controls and send a very large number of pieces for retouching, pieces that then compete with other pieces in the production flow.

• This consequently generates a multitude of small batches to manage and a high complexity in shipping (delays if the last pieces are awaited; otherwise, partial shipments).

Best practices

• It is recommended to perform quality controls upstream of production bottlenecks in order to minimize the number of defective pieces at these stations.

• It is also advisable to reduce the number of quality control points before over-capacity stations and observe the impact on the quality level during the final control. 

2/ Mastering your work in progress level

Issue 

• The raw materials used and processed in watchmaking are often precious and expensive metals (e.g., gold, platinum).

• Reducing the number of pieces in production at any given time in the workshop is therefore critical for the financial health of that workshop.

Best practices

• Implement processes to control work in progress (e.g., Kanban, Conwip) 

• Allow rapid transport of the product between the end of step N and the provision at the start of step N+1. In other words, do whatever is necessary so that there are never completed operations remaining in a workshop for several hours.
  
  

3/ Closely monitor subcontracting

Issue

• Most manufacturers subcontract a part of their production process or resort to subcontracting during peak load periods.

• Poor communication or a lack of anticipation with subcontractors and/or logistics teams can quickly lead to several days or even weeks of delay.

Best practices

• Establish contracts that secure the capacity and availability of your suppliers on critical steps/products. This often comes with a commitment in volume, duration, or price.

4/ Internally develop specialized skills that are bottlenecks

Issue

• Some skills are currently in high demand and are sought after. It is not unusual for the recruitment of a finisher, for example, in Switzerland to take several months.

Best practices

• Engage with a school and offer to train their students through internships.

• Create an internal learning incubator.

• Develop the skills of people internally.

• Develop your employer brand.

• Attract and unite your teams.

5/ Reduce variability in operations and cycle times

Issue

• In watchmaking, many jobs are manual or require considerable setup time.

• Thus, for the same operation, the execution time can vary greatly depending on the person performing it.

Best practices

• Monitor the performance of each person based on the production stage, the reference worked, or the setup in place. This information can then be summarized in a two-dimensional table (people / piece or setup) which displays in green the most productive operators on certain pieces/setups and in orange those who need assistance. 

• Implement training among operators to homogenize performances as much as possible and allow the most experienced individuals to share their knowledge and good practices.

  
  

6/ Display clear production priorities to teams

Issue

• Too often, the volume of operations carried out daily includes few priority operations due to a lack of communication.

• Priorities always exist but are not displayed for everyone to see or easily accessed.

• Alternatively, the progress information is not communicated quickly enough.

Best practices

• Implement a dynamic scheduling system that allows:

  • To clearly display priorities throughout the workshop (more effective than a printed support placed at the workstation).

  • To quickly update production progress, available operations, unforeseen events, and priorities (more effective than a printed support or a solution that does not allow interconnection between different stations).