Page 190 - How To Implement Lean Manufacturing

168 Cha pte r T e n

After a meeting with the top management, we decided that taking on the low pro-
duction was our number one goal. It was the key reason this product was highly unprof-
itable. The first thing we did was try to break down the problem into solvable pieces.
We asked three questions. Is the production shortage due to:
• Quality losses
• Availability losses
• Cycle-time losses
We had the quality information, and at this step of the process, quality losses were
insignificant. Our segregation bins gave us all the real-time information we needed. We
could “see” that quality losses were not the answer to our low production problem. Or
in Leanspeak, our transparency regarding quality yield was adequate for this issue.
Now we had to determine if availability was an issue. A quick check showed that
material stock outs were virtually nonexistent but the technicians were working on the
machines seemingly all the time. Significant downtime occurred, but we neither knew
how much of it there was nor did we know what was causing the downtime. We had
serious concerns here but had no information at all about the availability losses. Our
transparency in this instance was not only inadequate, it was nonexistent, but we did
have the andons.
Next, we looked into cycle time. Other than a few time studies done by the engi-
neers, no data on cycle time was available. The measured cycle time was advertised to
be 6.0 seconds. If the process performed at this cycle time, production should be 600
units per hour—the hourly goal referred to earlier. No measurement of cycle time—of
any kind—was done on the floor. The transparency about cycle time was similar to
availability information. It was inadequate and practically nonexistent.
With this review, we decided to implement an OEE (Overall Equipment Effective-
ness) program. (See the description of OEE in Chap. 4.) OEE information would allow
us to begin the understanding of production losses and segregate the information into
quality losses, availability losses, and cycle time losses. Forms were made, training was
done on gathering and entering data, and the information was set up to manage these
data with feedback after each shift.
We soon found out that the losses were about 20 percent on cycle time and almost 10
percent of availability losses. Although OEE is always lagging information, it was valu-
able information and told us we needed to work on both cycle time and availability.
However, when it came to understanding and improving the process in real time, we
were no closer than a shift away from good information, so we needed to improve that.
Nonetheless, we set up some goals, created an improvement plant, and the first
thing we attacked was cycle time. We did a controlled study and found the cycle time
was really 6.65 seconds, which surprised everyone. It meant the goal of 600 units per
hour was not even attainable. The 6.65-second bottleneck was a manual operation in the
welding process. This welding machine was operated by a robot that had a micropro-
cessor with a small display screen. Using some great imagination and innovation, the
engineering supervisor found a way to program the microprocessor and display the
cycle time for the manual operation. The operator now had real-time information
regarding cycle time. Immediately, the cycle time began to drop and stabilize, and like-
wise production increased. The drop in cycle time was amazing. In less then two weeks,
it had improved to 5.5 seconds. We implemented several kaizen activities to improve the
work station even further. One of these activities was to program the microprocessor to