Continuous improvement tools LAsian culture has had a significant impact on the rest of the world. Other cultures have learned and adopted many words frequently used in our daily languages related to martial arts, religion or food.
Within the business environment, Japan has greatly contributed to the language of business with numerous concepts that represent continuous improvement tools (kaizen tools) and with production philosophies such as Just-in-time. Just-in-time philosophy is also known as Lean Manufacturing. In this first chapter both of these production philosophies will be discussed.
Another important philosophy that will be studied in this book is the concept developed by a Japanese consultant named Kobayashi. This concept is based on a methodology of 20 keys leading business on a course of continuous improvement (kaizen). These 20 keys will also be presented in this chapter.
Finally, in this introductory chapter the production core elements will be presented in order to focus on improvement actions. In addition, a resource rate to measure improvement results is also explained.. Material flow and facilities layout Several productivity metrics, such as throughput or lead time, are directly affected by the where and how the processing and storage resources are located in the factory. In this chapter, different types of industrial processes and plant layouts are discussed.
Plant layout (changes in resource or even the factory location) is an activity that all companies are forced to deal with sooner or later. These situations occur due to technology innovations, increases in demand and some other productivity reasons. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with the methodologies used to carry out these kinds of studies.
Cellular layouts - where labor and machines are grouped in cells - will be presented in this chapter, because it is becoming increasingly important and also because it requires specific methodologies. Cellular layouts will be explained in depth in the following chapter. Material flow and design of cellular layouts In Chapter 2, the concept of factory layout and manufacturing cells was presented as a specific case of product/process layout. The basic analysis requirements necessary to properly transform a traditional factory into a cellular layout requires a unique development and implementation methodology. Because of the difference in layout analysis and philosophy, a separate chapter on cellular design and analysis is used for this important topic.
The use of cells creates a unique set of production modules. The division of the plant into cells exclusive to the production of a product family transforms the factory into a group of self-managed sub-factories or modules.
This chapter presents some design and analysis tools focused on getting a company ready to progress to cellular manufacturing.
When a production line is being designed, it is important to distribute the needed manufacturing tasks within the workstations as best as possible. One should always avoid any unneeded workstations, where task distribution is well defined and developed, lead time is reduced along with work-in-process and labor costs, etc. In this chapter line balancing techniques will be explained and developed. Poka-Yoke Shigeo Shingo developed a system to improve inspection tasks with the goal of guarantying 100% quality for manufactured parts, leading the change towards a free-defects process.
This chapter will explain inspection processes based on unnoticed mistake-proving devices (called Poka-Yoke). This type of inspection strategy complements Statistical Process Control (SPC) and is used primarily for inspecting logical features.
Poka-Yokes are visual and physical tools that should be utilized in conjunction with source inspection (concept also created by Shingo) in order for the two techniques to be effective. This concept will also be presented in this chapter. Motion study In this chapter, we will examine the second equipment efficiency indicator based on two factors: Equipment Performance losses due to minor stoppages (usually not registered) and equipment performance reduction caused by the equipment components deterioration/wear. In Chapter 7, we will study about equipment availability (set-up reduction) and quality related to start-up.
Small breakdowns or device (fixture and tooling) holdups are the responsible these machine stoppages. In other cases, an improper adjustment or interaction between the worker and the machine cycle can also create problems.
Time and motion study allows us to optimize the relationship between the worker and the machine as well as to investigate the worker to tending more than one machine, in those cases where the machine cycle is significantly longer than the worker cycle.
The main tools presented in this chapter are the worker-machine and the machine-machine diagrams. These tools help us to study the relationship between the worker and machine cycles (or between machines), eliminating or reducing idle time and optimizing the working cycle. Maintenance The role of maintenance is to insure the survivability and proper functioning of all company hardware (productive and non productive). Most maintenance departments are considered, by most companies, “a necessary evil” or a money pit that represents a continuous cost.
Managing a maintenance department can at times be nearly impossible, since investments required to improve production processes usually take on a low priority, or even worse may not even make it to the priority list for capital expenditures.
Maintenance evolution, as well as maintenance techniques evolution, has been developed in parallel for many companies:
The first obligation for the maintenance department is to remediate hardware failures that have already occurred. The next obligation after fixing breakdowns is to prevent future problems with the equipment that may eventually lead to failure.
The most advanced companies in maintenance management try to incorporate basic maintenance tasks into their daily production routine where direct labor personnel check fluid levels and examine the production equipment for potential failure mechanisms, also searching for ways to increase the ability of predicting equipment breakdowns. SMED It has become increasingly important to economically manufacture products in smaller and smaller product batches. On one hand, new management philosophies demand that product lead times (both development and then manufacturing times) are kept as small as possible. On the other hand, product customization has increased, thereby increasing the number of parts in a product family. As a result, batch sizes have been reduced and continue to shrink.
In this context companies should be as agile and flexible as possible. Part of the required agility is to reduce machine set-up time to minutes instead of days. Unless set-up time can be significantly reduced, it will be difficult to economically produce small batches and reduce lead time.
The Single-Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) methodology, as it is called, is a clear easy-to-apply methodology, that has produced good results in many cases very quickly, and amazing results in some other cases.
The SMED methodology was developed by Shigeo Shingo in Japan from 1950-80s. With this methodology, it is possible to achieve good results without costly investments, which makes implementation in many factories an easy decision to make. The 5S The third aspect that will be analyzed in this book is work environment and how it can be improved.
In the last decade, the number of implementation projects based on a methodology called “The 5S” has significantly increased. The name of this methodology corresponds to the initials of 5 Japanese words (also 5 English words) that are based on sort, organize and clean.
However, the main objective of the implementation of the 5S tool is to educate and maintain an attitude to support workers’ habits. These habits will allow employees to maintain the work environment in an orderly (sorted, organized and cleaned) manner with little effort.
The ideas utilized in this methodology are simple and most of them are based on common sense. However, in most companies, these procedures of organization and cleaning are not adhered to as well as they should be. Other improvement keys In previous chapters, different improvement tools that can be used to solve many production problems were discussed, illustrated and analyzed. These tools are included in the “20 Keys to workplace improvement” book. But not all the 20 keys have been explained.
The rest of the keys can be grouped in four categories:
• Human resources related keys.
• Efficient materials use related keys.
• Visual control related keys.
• Technology related keys.
In this chapter, all these tools are briefly described. To analyze them in depth, it is necessary to consult the Kobayashi’s book. We also include a discussion of the Jidoka (autonomotation) tool within the technology keys group. |
Overview