Accelerating the onboarding of a new factory partner

Abstract

Nike established the Advanced Manufacturing team to create a future of manufacturing that will be able to better meet growing customer expectations, battle rising costs of production, and unlock new design capabilities. While new methods of manufacturing are groundbreaking for Nike, there is currently no standard operating procedure on how to properly integrate these new methods into footwear manufacturing. Nike would like to better understand the current process and identify ways to increase the ease of deployment to ensure profitability and improved speed to market. To do this, the research explored the current state of bringing onboard a new factory partner to the factory network, investigated metrics through which to evaluate inefficiencies, and provided suggestions for process improvements to create a more efficient future state. Future state projections show significant decrease in factory setup time. Preliminary implementation of the suggestions shows encouraging results in decreasing cost and increasing speed to market. While results are currently theoretical, this research provides a baseline framework to identify waste and develop process improvements to more efficiently onboard a new factory partner.