I recently completed a project for a manufacturer in Montreal, one that had a number of problems setting up the ideal work station and one that had several issues pertaining to work stoppages. Production employees shared tools, machines, equipment and had flexible work schedules across multiple work cells and stations. The company had little to no structure to their work operations, and no mechanism to track cycle times.
This company simply had no control over how work was performed; their bill of materials were incomplete, they issued no work-orders, they had very little control over manufacturing drawings, and their inventory warehouse was free and open. In order to get them to understand just how damaging these issues were, we designed a lean manufacturing work cell and documented how impactful these issues were in determining work stoppages.
A Lean Work Cell
Setting up the perfect production workstation is the most important aspect of capturing lost time and improving cycle times in production. Ultimately, it's about adopting lean manufacturing principles, but simplifying them so the transition is nowhere near as difficult as it seems. Before we get into the “how” of setting up an ideal workstation, I just want to summarize the "why" in the points below:
- Sharing Tools and Equipment Never Works: Even if you have flexible schedules within shifts, and or adopt a work-sharing model, having production employees share resources never works the way it's intended. This forces one employee to remain idle, which quickly adds to work stoppages. By sharing, I mean two employees doing separate operations, both needing the same tool or equipment, but one having to wait for the other to complete their task. Some companies try to move production employees around to accommodate these issues, but it is very difficult to make it work.
- Minimizing Transit Times: Your enterprise must reduce transit times between work stations within work cells, and from one work cell to the next. If your people have to walk half way across the production floor to move semi-finished goods to the next chain in the process, then you’re wasting money and valuable production time. Minimizing transit times is an essential part of lowering the overall times on finished goods.
- Give Employees the Tools to Success: You are not saving money by limiting your employees ability to use the proper tools. Don’t waste their time and yours. After all, downtime directly impacts your product's COGS (cost of goods sold).
- Lower cycle times: Lowering times in each work station leads to higher production throughput. To be successful requires your production managers analyze these times at the source and not merely rely upon the data emerging from your enterprise resource planning software.
The above video is taken from the post: Simplifying Lean Manufacturing: Work Cell Output, Cycle Time Variances & Production Volumes
Production Employees Must Operate Like SurgeonsAgain, the company felt that managing available resources with work sharing schedules, was saving them money. In essence, they couldn't justify the investment in new equipment, machinery or tools because they had no idea of the costs of downtime. We performed the following exercise to show management just how much this strategy was costing them. These are the five steps we used to set up the perfect manufacturing workstation.
1. Initial Trial: We asked the production employee to perform a work task and took the cycle times of the operation. Needless to say, the times were extremely high. The assembly outline was unclear, there was no work orders and the lack of available tools made the work problematic. In addition, the bill of materials was incomplete.
2. Track Initial Cycle Times: We documented several times and forced the production manager not to intervene or help in any way. Once we had several references, and had documented all the downtime, and the reasons for it, we then moved towards setting up the ideal workstation.
This sheet above is taken from Small Manufacturer’s Sample Excel Sheet for Cycle Time Analysis. The article includes two excel sheets that allow you to write down times as they occur and the root causes of downtime in a notes section.
3. Set Up Perfect Work Station: This time we set up the work station as if the employee was a surgeon operating on a patient. The employee had all the necessary tools, a complete work order, an assembly outline that was easy to read and a complete bill of materials. The employee had everything needed to perform a seamless work task. We then documented the new times under these improved conditions.
4. Compare Cycle Times and Track Variances: We then compared these new times to the initial times from the first step. The changes we made reduced overall production times by 30-40% in the work cell. Part of this comparison involves tracking the variances in times from one shift to the next.
In essence, you are tracking multiple times and then placing them on a graph in order to isolate the root causes of work stoppages. The tables and video below provide an explanation of this approach and a link is provided to an article with a sample excel sheet for variance analysis.
The above video, table and graph are taken from the article: Cycle Time Tracking & Variance Analysis in Excel for Small Manufacturers.
5. Apply Dollar Value to Lost Time: We then applied a dollar value to the lost production time. We took the employees available work hours and calculated what the work stoppages meant in wages. We provided a summary that explained these costs each day, each shift, each week and each month. Applying a dollar value to downtime speaks directly to the urgency of eliminating the reasons for work stoppages.
The video above provides a simple five step process to setting up a lean manufacturing work cell.
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