Lean manufacturing cell

The Starting Point

Value stream mapping is a great way to spot opportunities for improvement in a process. Here a whole manufacturing department of interconnected processes was mapped, to show cycle time, inventory, product flow and more. Higher volume product was automatically assembled but lower volume product processed through an alternative route manually assembled by operators. It was here we saw an opportunity - the higher volume manually assembled products, were creating inventory and H&S issues. In addition to this the manufacturing area was unable to respond to shifts in end customer demand. A project was carefully scoped and chartered, and a cross functional team selected. The team included engineers and operatives and was based on the shopfloor for an intensive 3 weeks sprint.

Data Collection is not just for Six Sigma

The next steps were to be clear around the current state. A term we often hear in six sigma projects, but it’s equally important to understand where you are now in a lean project. In this case we created spaghetti diagrams to show movement, measured floor space, throughput time and the actual cycle time of the process - understanding what was and was not value added.

Making improvements

Once we understood the current state we defined the standard times for each product family, and then balanced out the work considering takt time. We used SMED to improve changeover time and designed a new layout, including gravity fed 2 box systems and a conveyor, to remove ergonomic issues and introduce single piece flow, The operators were a key part of the team, involved every step of the way collecting data, videoing their colleauges, designing the new layout. Ultimatley this supported sustaining the changes but it also gave the teams a huge sense of achievement and engagement with the business.

The results

The change was sustained, not only by the mindset on the shopfloor, but also by standard work documented in work instructions. The project delivered £360k in savings, including a 66% increase in output, 95% reduction in throughput time, 50% inventory reduction, 20% floor space reduction and the removal of all high risk ergonomic factors.