If there is one thing that is common to virtually all manufacturers it is that they face incessant pressure to lower costs while maintaining high quality. Most manufacturers have already automated as many aspects of production as possible so the final frontier for wringing costs out of the process is to increase productivity. This is a challenge because increased productivity that truly improves a company's performance only comes through improving the cumulative effect of labor availability, performance, and quality.

Shop Floor Visibility Key for Ceradyne

Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., Ceradyne Inc., is a 40-year-old fully integrated developer and manufacturer of advanced technical ceramic products and components for defense, industrial, automotive, nuclear, electronic and medical markets. It is a high-growth, maturing company with revenues growing aggressively -- more than doubling from 2005 to 2007 -- going from $368 million to $757 million.

Ceradyne is committed to developing leaner -- not meaner -- manufacturing practices. In the spirit of putting such guiding principles in place, the company relentlessly seeks to lower costs and eliminate waste while positively impacting worker morale.

Uncovering True Workforce Availability

To combat the challenges often faced by Ceradyne with shifting lead times and uneven product demand, and to maintain shop floor visibility in real-time, the company selected the Kronos for Manufacturing workforce management system.

The new system helped Ceradyne solve critical issues that enabled it to quickly redeploy resources and maximize workforce efficiency. For instance, one of operations real-time reports is called the "Who is here" report, which allowed the operations managers to know at all times who is on the premises, and working and what skills he/she possesses.

Say, a machinist has the flu and will not be in that day. Operations would have to manually go through employee records trying to find someone who could fill the position or go to an agency and hire someone on a temporary basis. Now Ceradyne can quickly identify potential replacements within the organization and fill the gap while using employees who are already on the payroll without any additional paperwork to fill out for labor allocations and adjustments. All required labor transactions are automatically tracked. This is a significant cost avoidance opportunity for Ceradyne's operations in its effort in achieving Lean Manufacturing.

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