The Product Wheel Handbook: Creating Balanced Flow in High-Mix Process Operations

The Product Wheel (PW) design process has practical methods for finding the optimum sequence, minimizing changeover costs, and freeing up useful capacity. So much so, that the DuPont™ Company and Exxon Mobil are just a few companies that have used the product wheel concept to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage.

Breaking down a fairly complex design process into manageable steps, The Product Wheel Handbook: Creating Balanced Flow in High-Mix Process Operations, 2nd Edition, walks readers through the process for designing and implementing the PW technique. It includes a case study taken from actual practice that illustrates the design process and its benefits. Describing how to apply the product wheel technique to any manufacturing operation, the book:

• Details the steps required to implement product wheels
• Explains why certain traditional manufacturing metrics should be reevaluated so they don’t inhibit product wheel performance
• Defines the cultural foundation necessary for smooth product wheel design and implementation
• Includes a real-world case study and several examples of product wheels being used by successful manufacturing companies—including BG Products, Inc., the DuPont™ Company, the Dow Chemical Company, and Appleton

Many of the steps in wheel design described in this book are not new. What’s new is their application to production planning and scheduling problems, and more importantly, a clear roadmap explaining how and when they should be used in product wheel design. Supplying you with the tools to reduce the chaos often found in production scheduling, the book outlines a disciplined structure that will allow you to spend less of your time resolving schedule problems. Most importantly, it provides your organization with a stable platform to deal with abnormal events in a less stressful and more logical manner.

This second edition builds on the original DuPont-based framework by incorporating successful implementations across diverse industries—including food manufacturing (e.g., salad dressings, chips, puddings), frozen entrees, pharmaceuticals, and nutraceuticals. These varied experiences have led to broader methodologies and new techniques. In addition, this edition offers a deeper dive into Economic Production Quantity (EPQ), including how to handle approximations and interpret results when input data is uncertain.

Peter L. King is the president of Lean Dynamics, LLC, a manufacturing improvement consulting firm located in Rehoboth Beach, DE. Prior to founding Lean Dynamics, Pete spent more than 30 years with the DuPont Company, in a variety of control systems, manufacturing systems engineering, Continuous Flow Manufacturing, and Lean Manufacturing assignments. That included 18 years applying Lean Manufacturing techniques to a wide variety of products, including sheet goods like DuPont™ Tyvek®, Sontara®, and Mylar®; fibers such as nylon, Dacron®, Lycra®, and Kevlar®; automotive paints; performance lubricants; bulk chemicals; adhesives; electronic circuit board substrates; and biological materials used in human surgery. On behalf of DuPont, Pete consulted with key customers in the processed food and carpet industries. Pete retired from DuPont in 2007, leaving a position as Principal Consultant in the Lean Center of Competency. Recent clients have included producers of sheet goods, lubricants, fuel additives, polyethylene and polypropylene pellets, salad dressings, potato and corn chips, pharmaceuticals, vitamin tablets, and cheese sauces and puddings.

Pete received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, graduating with honors. He is Six Sigma Green Belt certified (DuPont, 2001), Lean Manufacturing certified (University of Michigan, 2002) and is a Certified Supply Chain Professional (APICS, 2010). He is a member of the Association for Manufacturing Excellence, APICS, and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He served as president of IIE’s Process Industry Division in 2009 – 2010.

Pete is the author of Lean for the Process Industries – Dealing with Complexity (Productivity Press, 2009, 2019), several other books published by Productivity Press, and a dozen published articles on the application of lean concepts to process operations. He has been an invited speaker at several professional conferences and meetings.

DuPont™, Tyvek®, Sontara®, Kevlar® are trademarks or registered trademarks of E. I. D duPont de Nemours and Company. Mylar® is a trademark of DuPont Teijin Films; Dacron® and Lycra® are trademarks of Koch.

Jennifer S. King is an Operations Research Analyst with Regulus Group, analyzing operational impacts of emerging FAA technologies and developing cost and performance models to support airline investment decisions. Prior to that, she spent five years with the Department of Defense developing discrete event simulation models to assist the army in setting reliability requirements for new platforms, and analyzing performance of weapon systems alternatives. Her prior publishing experience includes editing textbooks and developing mathematics problems and solutions for ExploreLearning, and co-authoring the first edition of this book and Value Stream Mapping for the Process Industries.

Jennifer has degrees in Mathematics and Psychology from the University of Virginia, and a Masters degree in Operations Research from the University of Delaware. She is a member of INFORMS.