A Leading Manufacturer in High Tech Sector

Lean Implementation included a series of Kaizen Events, with the various Lean tools applied in the proper sequence (such as mistake proofing, cell design and 5S)

THE ENVIRONMENT PRIOR TO OUR INVOLVEMENT There were some indications of initial Lean implementation throughout the manufacturing area.

Many employees were familiar with the concepts of Lean and were attempting implementing them in their areas.

They were aware of the need to change but often could not find the time to make required changes and somewhat unsure of ‘how’ to structure an effective Lean transformation.

Thinking was largely departmental and not enterprise wide.

Currently operations were laid out in work areas with each group concentrating on how to improve their own departments.

Their focus was on getting the material they needed and to reduce the time required to add value and send it along.

This process thinking was resulting in inventories of product building up in between the departments, leading to production delays as well as tying up a great deal of cash. OUR CHALLENGE: To get employees to think in terms of the whole value stream end-to-end instead of focusing on ‘points’ or department silos.

Reduce the number of days of work in progress by half and create a pull system from customer to shipping.

To position Lean as a way of supporting the company’s Green aspirations and provide them with the tools to do so.

The First Manufacturing Future State highlights were to:

• Create a pull process,
• Starting at kitting right through to shipping.
• Set up cells,
• Groups of employees that could pass one item at a time to the next work step using ‘pull’ and kanban systems. Employees had to position themselves in close proximity, with materials arriving complete, perfect and just in time.
• Organize cells made up of people from different departments to help eliminated departmental/silo thinking.
• Develop a flexible system where the volume of work determined the number of cells required to meet the changing demands.
• Establish pitch measures to immediately flag up problems should they arise and develop a process for corrective action. These measures are based on customer demands.

IMPLEMENTATION Lean Implementation included a series of Kaizen Events, with the various Lean tools applied in the proper sequence (such as mistake proofing, cell design and 5S)

ENERGY VALUE STEAM MAPPING™ was applied simultaneously with the ENTERPRISE VALUE STREAM mapping to completely understand the impact the Lean transformation would have on the 10th waste--‘energy’. (Lean eliminates the first 9 wastes, over production, inventory, waiting, transportation, motion, over processing, quality defects, reprioritization and people skills).

Areas of Energy waste that were examined: 

• wrong sized equipment,
• equipment running excessively,
• too much equipment running,
• non-recoverable heat loss,
• inventory,
• stack emissions,
• waste water,
• overproducing,
• transportation,
• over processing,
• defects,
• excess packaging,
• excess fluids, gases, solids
• Waste by-products.

Overall Outcome: Lead times cut in half.
Multi-million $ savings from this one value stream.

• Thousands of $$ savings in direct energy cost.
• Measurable reductions in environmental pollutants. Substantial
• decrease in required floor space in manufacturing area, providing extra needed production capacity.
• Energized employees on the manufacturing floor (ownership of ongoing improvements).