Operations

What are you going to do about your plant’s ‘cats and dogs’?

Dealing with "cats and dogs,” parts or products that are typically small volume, high variety, hard to make, or all of the above, always present a challenge. Many companies decide to outsource them,keeping the "high runners" in-house. In The Birth of Lean, Taiichi Ohno faced the same dilemma in the early days at Toyota. He argued for making the "cats and dogs" in-house. Making the low-volume parts in-house would mean high unit costs, and that would pressure the company to tackle kaizen improvements and cost reductions.