Breakthrough Kaizen in a Heat Treat Cell

The best results in kaizen happen when the highest level hands on leader is not only engaged, but is leading the charge.?

In 2008, I was in a Director of Manufacturing role and had full responsibility for all of the production in the factory.?

After being in my position for 3 months, it was highly evident from all of the metric data I had been observing and the day to day activities on the shop floor that heat treat was the largest delay in the system for all of the value streams.

The lead-time was 3.5 weeks!?

There were numerous shop floor control workers who wasted a lot of their time during the day searching for their parts in the heat treat cell and interrupting the production of the heat treat personnel by continually asking for assistance in locating their parts.

In order to address this, I assembled my team for a one hour training session on the Toyota Production System.

At the end of the training, I announced that we would be using this knowledge to conduct a kaizen event in the heat treat cell.??

I assigned the supervisor of that area to be the team leader for the kaizen event and gave him one on one training and coaching prior to and during the event.

I assigned all of the operators that work in the heat treat cell, the manufacturing engineer that supports the cell and one set of outside eyes to be team members.

In order to have all of the people who worked in that area participate on the kaizen event, I had to strategically shut down production in that cell for 5 days.?

When I announced to my peers that I was planning to shut our bottleneck cell down for 5 days, I received a lot of negative press and backlash.?

I had confidence and faith that the team would deliver big results with my teaching and coaching, but I also knew that no one would believe me until it happened.

On day one of the event, I joined the team to come up with the overall strategy.

I had based it on observations that I had made while skiing.

In order to get to the best runs on most mountains, you either have to take a gondola or the quad lift.

The lines for the quad lift are on both sides of the lift because the traffic is coming in from different sides of the mountain.

The lifts run a bit differently these days, but back then, In order to be both fair and efficient, the lift operator would have one group from each lane come forward and enter the lift in a clockwise rotation.

The lift also provided a singles lane for those who are skiing alone and need to be paired up with a group.

Due to the fact that there aren't a lot of groups of 4 that are skiing together, if you take the singles lane, you will have several opportunities to be paired up and won't be waiting in line as long.

This results in you getting on the lift much faster and helps you get more runs per day.

I shared this basic model with the kaizen team and asked them to find a way to group the incoming parts so they can fit into 5 lanes.

We could then have a sixth lane that would serve as an expedite lane for whenever something needs to move faster.

Using existing racks in the building that we freed up by performing basic 5S, I worked with the team to set up the 5 lanes and the expedite lane.

I challenged them to come up with a method to group the parts into 5 lanes and told them I would check in on them once a day.

Their solution at the end of day 1 was 20 lanes.

I held up my hand showing 5 fingers and sent them back to the drawing board.

On day 2, they got it down to 10 lanes.

My hand went up again to send them back to try again.

They shook their heads thinking it was impossible.

On day 3, the manufacturing engineer smiled with pride that he had found a way to group the heat treat codes into 5.?

Days 4 and 5 were spent running the new cell.

We measured the leadtime on day 5 using a very simple method.?

The lead-time was 3 days.

The team continued to make improvements while operating the cell on a day to day basis.?

When the official lead-time metric came in the next month, it was down to 1.5 days.?

It maintained this performance the entire time I worked there and from what I have heard in recent years, it continues to operate this way.

We never had to use the expedite lane for expedites due to the significant reduction in lead-time.

We ended up using that 6th lane to process a brand new product that was acquired by the business as it did not fit into any of the 5 lanes.

A new paradigm had replaced the old one by incorporating Innovative Breakthrough kaizen.

If you want to discuss this in greater detail or hire us to deploy it as part of a complete production system at your company, send me an email, and let's have a chat. >[email protected]

Until next week,?

Nicole.