Cycle Time reduction

CAE is the world’s largest manufacturer of flight simulators, with an estimated 95% market share. They employ approximately 5,000 employees, based in Montreal. SatiStar presented and sold senior management on a project to reduce cycle time of CAE’s receiving and inspection processes, through reengineering. Two previous attempts at cycle time reduction using internal personnel had failed. SatiStar worked for 4 days with CAE’s team of 6 employees to analyze and produce a reengineering design, reducing overall workload for receiving and inspection considerably, (mostly by removing redundant and repetitive activities. Major impacts of this intervention included:

• Cycle time for receiving and inspecting incoming parts was reduced from cycle time of 17.5 days to 2 days immediately, with an eventual decline to ½ day—a 97% reduction.
• Implementation costs were trivial (less than 15k$ – mainly for re-programming)
• Implementation took place over a 2 week period
• The manager of the department cancelled plans to hire 6 new receiving and inspection personnel, and has actually deployed existing receiving and inspection personnel to assist other departments
• SatiStar also created a re-engineered concept for CAE’s overall order fulfillment process (from contract signing to the simulator being handed over for testing). Results included:

• Significant projected cycle time reduction from 74 days to 35 days (for the administrative, and scheduling portion of the overall order fulfillment process)
• The concept created allows for this cycle time to be further reduced to a maximum of 2 days (a 97% reduction)
• This work was carried out over a one week period