Reduce Unique ICDs by Redesigning the Product or the Process

The objective of this activity is to reduce the number of ICDs by reducing the occurrence of an ICD in producing a unit of Output, or by reducing the number of separate ICDs used in the Output. A unique ICD is one of the key activities in the work center's contribution to the final product (O). It is separate and distinct from any other activity in the work center. For example, the fastening of a part onto a subassembly and a quality control check of the subassembly would be unique ICDs.

A. Redesign the product

Reduce ICDs by redesigning the product or the components of the product. Any redesign of the product or its components implies that the resulting product, after the redesign, would be acceptable to customers.

3.
Reduce or change components

No.	Industry SIC	Year	Notes
1	2273	1996	While a polypropylene shortage led to a price shock in 1995, its historically low price relative to nylon has caused polypropylene to take an increasingly significant role in the carpet production process.
2	3571	2003	Engineers redesigned LCD monitors so they could fit into smaller boxes, reducing shipping costs. That saved $3.50 apiece on 450,000 units, or $1.6 million.
3	3572	1993	Quantum and MKE collaborated on a new design that gives its disk drive a lower price and better reliability. In most drives the circuitboard holds about 18 semiconductors inserted front and back. By packing more power into each semiconductor, they reduced the number by half and can fit all the chips on a single side of the board. The new practice has cut the number of components by 30% and halved production time. With fewer parts, the drives break down less often.
4	3578	1989	NCR's new cash register has so few parts–no screws or bolts – that it takes only 25% as much time to assemble. One expert says that, although cost of screws is low, the price of using them to put products together (mostly in time) can pile up to 75% of total assembly costs.
5	4512	2006	Through thick and thin, Southwest Airlines keeps expanding its available seat miles and routes because of its ability to maintain low operating costs. A few months ago, it removed all the light bulbs behind no-smoking signs in planes, saving on bulbs and power. It saves $100,000 annually by buying cheaper mops to clean planes. Starting in early 2007, the company plans to install fuel-saving, aerodynamic winglets on the ends of many of its Boeing-737 jets.
6	5200	2007	Researchers have found that in-person training is more effective, especially for sales. Home Depot relies on online training for cashiers as it is faster and cheaper. However, training for the sales floor has proven less successful. As a result, Home Depot has begun recruiting experienced home repair professionals to train new employees. Columbia Sportswear and Qwest also rely heavily on in-person training.
7	7372	2004	Nintendo required its third party developers to pay all its proprietary cartridge cost as well as manufacturing fees and royalties up front so the soft ware developer bore all the commercialization risk. In addition, the cartridges took a minimum of three months to respond to a change in demand. The use of CDs gave Sony a big advantage in responding to the game market. The CDs were much cheaper than cartridges which sold for $35 in 1996 and had larger data capacity at 650 MB versus 16 MB for the cartridges. This allowed more graphics, animation and levels of difficulty.

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