Applied Technology and Science, Inc. is now providing a 37 point no-cost assessment of the Opportunities for Improvement in your manufacturing operations. This assessment focuses on making you competitive in your industry. To schedule this free assessment or to understand how we can help you troubleshoot production problems, contact us directly at 610-850-2769 or Click Here To Send an Email.
Discussions of the methods and practices to improve manufacturing operations.
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For the past couple of decades, it has been good for the bottom line to source materials, components and products from offshore suppliers. Most recently China has been the supplier of choice due to its low labor rates. Reshoring is to once again source domestically those materials, components and products that in the past have been sourced outside the United States.
As a Supplier, your customer may ask you for a Root Cause/Corrective Action Report when they experience a problem or receive defective parts from you. As Customer, you may make such a request when you have similar issues with a supplier and want to see that your supplier has taken immediate action to protect you as well as action to prevent the problem from happening again.
There are many ways of defining the Yield of a manufacturing process, but in the end they all indicate how many times you made a good product out of the number of times you tried. What is acceptable yield in your business is determined by the economics of your business, but almost always we want better yields. Sometimes, a yield problem develops suddenly. When this occurs, it can be catastrophic to your business. In either case it is useful to have a method to uncover and correct the cause or causes.
The FMEA methodology is used to systematically analyze a process, a machine, a system or a product design for failure modes and to determine a level of risk associated with each failure mode. In doing so, a well done FMEA has the potential to save the company money and increase the level of customer satisfaction.
5S stands for five Japanese words that embody the key steps in organizing the workplace for higher productivity. The main idea is that a clean and organized workplace makes it quicker to locate the needed tools or parts. Deterioration of tools and equipment is also identified before it becomes a catastrophic work stoppage.
OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is a metric that combines measures of (1) Availability, (2) Performance and (3) Quality into one overall number. This metric is widely used by companies as a KPI, Key Performance Indicator, to monitor and improve the effectiveness of individual equipment, a work cell or a whole production line.
The Third Habit is to “Put First Things First”. That is to do the things first that are important to achieving the goals for your company. Some activities and tasks are absolutely necessary to complete, some are a total waste of time, and some are in the middle. Covey categorizes all tasks into a matrix of four categories. Quadrant 2 is the important, but not urgent activities. You often never get around to these even though they are important to your business!
Operations is that part of a manufacturing enterprise that is concerned with the making and distribution of the product or products. You can get ulcers and loose sleep over making this part of an enterprise function smoothly. Operations include the functions of Purchasing, Manufacturing & Production Control, Quality, Maintenance, Warehousing and Shipping.
Lack of focus, unexpected developments, inexperienced people, insufficient people or making improvements in these areas can all result in missed shipments and unhappy customers. Operations Facilitation is the grease that smoothes over these rough spots that creep up from time-to-time in the Operations side of a company. These rough spots are what result in missed shipments. The grease is provided by a person experienced in the Operations side of a manufacturing enterprise.
The Save Energy Now® program of the Department of Energy is a national initiative that aims to drive a reduction of 25% or more in industrial energy intensity in 10 years. All around the country, assessments conducted at energy-intensive manufacturing facilities are helping U.S. companies uncover ways to save energy and money, enhance their competitiveness in global markets, and improve their bottom line. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Industrial Technologies Program (ITP) offers several options for energy- and cost-saving plant assessments. You can read about how to get started on your assessment in this Department of Energy brochure.
Clearly, if you are happy with the performance of your company, if you already have a program in place that is improving your metrics everyday, if these popular programs can’t meet your goals or if you just plain “don’t have the time” (maybe because you are busy solving the problems), well then don’t invest in a Lean or Six Sigma program.
You ask yourself, “Should I invest in using bar coding on my plant floor? What is the payback?” The payback for such a system is usually between 9 and 12 months. Read more to understand how to get this benefit for your company.
What do you know about the status of your production floor? What is the status of the current jobs that are on the floor? What are the holdups? Are there yield or scrap problems that you don’t know about? Are your production lines and machines operating as defined on the router? In many companies, this information exists in manual logs and notes on the shop packet paperwork and is usually gathered by the Production Supervisor/Manager at the beginning of the shift. So if a rush order comes in, what’s done? Is the same information gathered again? Unless someone goes out on the floor and gathers that information again, the current status of a job is unknown. If you don’t gather the information after the job has been released to the floor and you wait until it is completed ... there’s an Information Black Hole.
Long changeover and setup times kill productivity and increase costs especially when there are small lot sizes. There is a solution! Back in the 50’s and 60’s, Shigeo Shingo developed what has become known as the SMED System. SMED stands for Single Minute Exchange of Dies. Not every changeover can be done in 1 minute, but by using Shingo’s ideas, changeover times in many industries have been reduced from hours to a few minutes.
Sustainable Manufacturing is defined as “the creation of manufactured products that use processes which minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and consumers and are economically sound.” However, right now in this economy for many manufacturing companies the more significant issue is sustaining the business, period. Do you realize that implementing the Lean Manufacturing practices will not only help you sustain your company, but also minimize its negative environmental impacts?
Once you have identified what problem to start on in the “Hidden Factory,” the fix for the problem can be obvious, but often it is not. When the fix is not obvious, an effective and efficient method of attack is needed. There is a proven process to finding what in a production process changes and results in defective parts in a production process.
The “Hidden Factory” as a cost generator. Knowing about this factory, the question is “Where do you start in eliminating it?” The answer lies in the 80-20 Rule with which most all of us are familiar. That is 80% of your hidden factory comes from only 20% of the defects causing rework or scrap. Gathering the data to perform this Pareto analysis is where you get started towards eliminating the “Hidden Factory.”
Most companies will have some idea of the level of scrap associated with their production. Fewer companies will have an understanding of the amount of rework required to get the product out the door. Rework is often called the hidden factory! Reducing the size of this hidden factory is one key to controlling and reducing production costs.