LEAN MFG SYSTEMS

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Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy that focuses on the reduction of eight specific wastes:

OVERPRODUCTION

Push versus Pull Manufacturing; producing parts before they are needed anywhere throughout a process.

TRANSPORTATION

Moving parts from one part of the facility to another between operations.

MOTION

Walking, searching, reaching and any type of excessive handling.

WAITING

Unbalanced operations that create bottle necks; waiting in between machine cycles; waiting for materials; machine downtime; machine change-over time.

NVA PROCESSING

Over engineering and non-value added processes; processes that do not add perceived value to the customer; processes needing to be combined.

INVENTORY

Excessive raw material storage, WIP and finished goods inventory.

DEFECTS

Scrap created during manufacturing; customer returned products for any reason.

UNDERUTILIZED TALENT AND IDEAS

Not involving your people and their ideas for improvement into the Lean Transformation process.

LEAN MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS- A CASE STUDY

One customer recently invited us in to help them reach a future state goal of 100% on-time delivery, from order to shipment within a 24 hour period, in their small parcel office products division. They were currently running at 70% with 6 people on first shift and 4 people on second shift. The facilities director wanted to know how much more equipment (conveyors, computers, motorized pallet jacks…) and people they were going to need to get to their goal of 100%.

After spending 4 hours on first shift and 4 hours on second shift I gathered videos, pictures, comments from operators and support staff and I made a list of all the NON-VALUE ADDED ACTIVITIES (waste) associated with this particular value stream.

The list was two pages long and included:

➢ Walking to get paperwork

➢ Sorting through paperwork

➢ Walking around conveyors and equipment

➢ Handling the same items multiple times

o Stacking and moving and restacking

o Batching of products

o Sorting and resorting

➢ Taking up floor space with WIP

➢ Taking up floor space with Finished goods (packages that had been processed and labeled – ready to ship)

➢ Working around the WIP

➢ Working around the Finished goods…and much, much more.

Within a few days I presented a proposal for a 1 week Kaizen event that would drastically reduce the non-value added activities, reduce the amount of equipment, reduce the required floor space, reduce the number of people, stream-line their process and increase their on-time delivery to 100%.

During the 1 week event, working with some of the customer’s key people, we successfully:

➢ Trained there people on the basics of Lean while facilitating the changes

➢ Implemented a new order filling procedure

➢ Rearranged the equipment

➢ Eliminated 80% of the conveyors

➢ Reduced the floor space required by 67%

➢ Eliminated the need for second shift; giving them access capacity to grow their sales

➢ Created a visual status board so that managers could track the days shipments

➢ Increased there on-time delivery to 100%

➢ Reduced their minutes per case from 10 to 1.33 minutes per case = 86.7% increase in productivity with less people, equipment and floor space