Client Results

Lean Approach

Time studies were conducted to understand the "value added" content to "non value added" and it was quickly recognized that the value added content was less than 15% meaning there was 85% waste in the process. Much of this waste was due to workplace organization and material presentation resulting in a lot of time incurred walking and searching. A kaizen was held to clearly identify work content by body section and put standard work in place for that section. Material was presented to the weld station on a dedicated cart and contained only the material that the standard work required. This minimized both searching and unnecessary movement as everything was right there in the work area. Fixtures were designed and built to minimize unnecessary set-up and clamping using quick release methodologies so you could literally load and lock the material weld and release in seconds. This took hours away from the previous state. 10% of the time was spent preparing the material for weld and this was semi automated and delivered to the area "pre-prepared"

Lean Impact

A significant reduction in hours (over 50%) and the body could be consistently welded in 2.5 days. This allowed the client to be able to double production volume of vehicles.

Lean Approach

A “Value Stream Analysis” was conducted through the plant, which quickly revealed several items:

1. The cycle times for the processes were generally very short (less than 10 seconds per unit)
2. The process was being conducted in a "batch and queue" mode
3. Inventory was everywhere in various stages of completion with no real understanding as to what should be worked on next
4. The resources for this particular item were not in the same line of sight location creating problems with materials replenishment between workstations.
5. The production goal for the day was not understood by the shop floor personnel.

This led to re-arranging the sewing machines into a co-located "cell" where material was "pulled" through the process one unit at a time eliminating "batch and queue". The machines responsible for each progressive step physically touched each other so material flowed from one machine to another without the need to be containerized or stored. Material replenishment was managed by a visual "kan-ban" system at both ends of the production line. Visual management was put in place and the daily task was broken down into "hourly" increments so it could be quickly seen if the day's task was not going to be met and more importantly countermeasures established quickly to remedy this. Every employee had the daily goals communicated to them at the start of the shift.

Lean Impact

The production volumes could now be met with 70% less inventory and also the task could be met within one shift instead of two allowing people to be moved to other product lines that needed support. Quality problems became apparent very quickly and this minimized the "pipeline" of non-conformance that had the potential to create stoppages in the past.

Lean Approach

A lot can be determined by simple observation. In this case, it was apparent that there were two separate flows:

1. Extrusion flow
2. Sheet metal flow

And then after being processed they came together to form a "kit" for welding.

It became apparent very quickly that the extrusions spent time "waiting" for the sheet metal to catch up and further investigations showed that there was a large amount of inventory waiting in front of the first step of the sheet metal process which was the "punch". (This machine basically punched shapes out of large sheets of material to go into the kits). At this point it was clear where the bottleneck was. The next step was to arrange the material into a First In First Out (FIFO) Lane and the rules were set to process only WHAT was required WHEN it was required. When the machine was studied it was clear that during any particular hour it was only cutting material for 16 minutes out of every hour or 26% of the time and the reason for this is that the machine operator was searching for and loading material and then taking it off the machine after it was punched all of which are Non Value Added activities. The work activities of the "Punch Team" where a pre-defined and a "Dance Sequence" was established where one person loaded material onto the machine from a pre-kitted stack of sheet, the operator ran the machine and if he had to leave that machine for any reason it was seen as a need to generate further countermeasures. One person was also responsible for removing the material after the machine had stopped and then break the individual pieces into their respective "kits" for deburring. Once established and refined, this became the operators Standard Work.

Lean Impact

The machine utilization went from 26% to over 50% and the daily output of sheets doubled from 35 sheets per day to just over 70. This met the new customer demand without the need for an additional shift or capital spend.

Lean Approach

It was decided to use a process of pictures to get the message across and describe the process of lean as a river (Flow) and that river “pulls” material through processes in successive stages in a single piece format. The pictures went on to describe how “key” processes would look and operate and what success would look through the eyes of the employee and customer alike. These were presented to all employees and discussed and questions were answered. Supervisors had a more in-depth training in their meaning and use. These images were displayed at every communications board in the company.

Lean Impact

The rate of understanding and adoption improved tremendously, supported by a strong Lean Steering Committee and also training in the tools of lean for ALL employees. During this period of implementation, inventories dropped by 10% and customer satisfaction levels were maintained in excess of 95%.