A lean approach to manufacturing optimization

Abstract

This document provides the reader with insight into the project at Cosira Group, Vulcania, Springs. The project was completed in the period of February-October 2012. This document relates all progress on the project from the start up to completion. Project Solutions are high level management improvements that make sense and solve problems at their origin rather than fixing symptoms. Although ‘hard science’ solutions are typically associated with Engineers, business solutions are what business owners, who employ Engineers, actually seek. The Industrial Engineer has a unique aptitude for designing business solutions to improve global system performance. This opposed to only focusing on the local optimization of a process that would probably improve performance for the given process, but generate no greater profit in the larger scheme of things. The pre-packing area is an area where all pre-cut pieces, or otherwise prepared parts, are brought together. The parts are allocated to the assemblies they are meant to form and quality checks are done. From here they go into the assembly/fabrication operations. The problem occurs when all parts necessary for an assembly are not available at the time when they must be moved to the assembly operations. This creates excess work in progress (WIP). Problems also occur when parts are duplicated because the original part could not be found when it was needed. The part could have been missing because it was lost during transport or because it failed to conform to specifications. The metric used to measure the performance of this area is inefficient and creates a backlog due to the misconception of priority-parts and/or assemblies. Information was gathered by means of interviews with employees, data capturing and analysis and observations at different times and dates of the workshop. It was determined that there is no system or policy to provide priority to jobs. The performance and reward metric is ‘tons per month’ and this naturally forces ‘higher tonnage-lower effort’ jobs through the system while leaving the opposite behind as inventory. Further research and analysis of data uncovered many hidden flaws in the system. The scope was subsequently enlarged to include all possible root causes and later narrowed down again to only include critical root causes which have become the main focus. Solutions, although not yet implemented, will create: greater flow consistency through the workshop, smaller lead times, a higher number of orders completed and less work in progress. Estimates show possible savings of R20 million on WIP and increased revenue of R15ooo-R24000/ton of throughput. Customer satisfaction will increase significantly; however, there is no system in place to measure this yet.