Advice to an Aspiring Practitioner on Improvement
Manny Veloso
With Our Learn-and-Do Approach, We Build Practitioners Who Think and Act Like Owners
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I was coaching one of my Yellow Belts with their problem statement and objective as part of the 16 hour training to build practitioners.
They want to improve the efficiency of a labeling machine in a corrugated box manufacturing plant. A little background: a labeler applies graphic labels to a sheet while flat and then goes to be converted into a box. It's an upstream process and critical to keeping the plant running.
It's also the only machine of its kind in the plant, so getting machine efficiency from 65% to 85% would have a large benefit for downstream processes.
Email text below based on my review of the A3 and accompanying screenshot of a typical production report with a month's production data:
Hey Pat,
With the view you sent of your process production report with hours and efficiencies, it is difficult to know how the process is performing. I know you can pull up other reports, however it's difficult to read this summary report, and I'm assuming the other reports are similar.
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Just to be clear, by tackling efficiency you are proposing a Green Belt-level?project.? You have an unknown root cause and a suspect measurement system.? I have a Green Belt class starting in February that still has room when you're ready to go exploring the data analysis waters.
Let's talk about what you can do in the meantime to improve processes, and thereby improve machine efficiency immediately.? I'd focus on 5S and flow projects as the first level of improvement on this machine.
A muda walk eliminates the waste of "Conference Room Kaizens" in which people sit and speculate on problems and solutions.
Specifically, I'd start with some of these simple opportunities available:
For even better ideas for improvement, try asking the operator how things are going and if there is something that would make their lives easier.?
These activities are all things that need to be done on a foundational level and will improve the process outcomes immediately.? It's all part of reducing the noise, or common cause variation, inherent to the process. This is the variability that leads to different process outcomes on a daily basis, absent any major issues one can point to.
For the best ideas, work with the operator to iterate to the best method to complete any task.
I'm going to poke around with that data a bit.? Let's talk Monday AM or PM to understand what it all means.? Let me know what works for you and we can get on Google Meet.
In the meantime, you can read about Taiichi Ohno's version of a muda walk using a chalk circle to get some inspiration.
Manny
Links Section
·?????? Instructor-Led Online LSS Yellow Belt Training?January 2024
·?????? Live LSS Green Belt Training?in Greater Philadelphia February 202
Our Learn-and-Do approach builds practitioners who think and act like owners. Reach out for more information today!
"Designed by Trainers… for Trainers" is not just a line! Check out the bestselling Red Bead and Blue Bead Experiment kits and others!
Global Transportation & Trade Compliance Manager at Dwyer-Omega
1 年Great advice here Manny One of the first lessons of Lean I learned years ago was to “go to Gemba” to understand issues with flow and process- foundational learnings you’ll need before you can attack them - instead of flailing around and hope to get lucky. Now that you have me hooked, you’ll need to post what happened with the uptime on the labeling machine.