50 Sec Vs. 7 Shifts
How to improve the flow in operations + 2 quotes and 1 Image to kindle your thoughts
1 Article for the Week: 50 Seconds Vs. 7 shifts
Recently, I visited a company which manufactures Sound Proofing and Thermal engineering products for Automotive sector. Factory Manager and I, had a walkthrough of the unit and I started collecting the data on the cycle times of the operations.
For their Fast moving product category, we observed that there are 5 operations and the cycle times of each operation is less than 10 seconds. i.e the product should not take more than 1 min to produce - if it moves in single piece.
However, in reality the product takes more than 7 days to undergo the full value addition (RM to FG).
The shopfloor had a lot of wastes:
Lot of bins as WIP was high - due to batch production
Fork Lift Trucks are required - as bins were heavy
Lack of space - WIP occupied huge space
Change over time was more than 1 hour - compared to less than 10 mins for similar presses in other industry
Excess Handling of materials - due to High WIP
We did a small training program for the HODs after the visit and explained the wastes and helped them see the wastes. They have created a roadmap to reduce the wastes in the next 2 months and we would be helping them on the journey.
If you compare the Value Added Time (Work) Vs. Non-Value Added Time(Waste), generally it will be less than 1%. In this case this ratio is 50sec/7 shift = 0.02%
I suggested them to create a flow (continuous flow production) to reduce the WIP, which will reduce the wastes, esp. WIP.
How quickly can you convert your RM to FG? Got any ideas while reading this post? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
2 Quotes for the Week:
"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly." — Jim Rohn
"The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers." — Sam Walton
1 Image for the Week: