Involvement with innovation – WWL WAY

Involvement with innovation – WWL WAY

Customer: An Industrial Giant who provides automation solution to huge range of industrial sectors who vastly differ in material, process and parameters and regulations. WWL is working as an extended arm of the mentioned Industry who is having a state of art manufacturing facility in India.

WWL is an ISO and AEO certified organisation, responsible for their inhouse operations which includes design and implement, systems and procedures for their END to END supply chain activities inside their plant including training and ensuring safety.

WWL has taken the challenging responsibility of revamping the activity of material transfer to production and brining a sea change in the material availability in work stations.

WWL did the study with their technical value streaming experts and brought a wonderful alternate solution. WWL has introduced a novel and most dynamic activity in the material transfer to production called WATER SPIDER.

Activity: Material issue from stores to production

A water spider is a go fetch person and he will make the material available in process area without fail. The role of the water spider is making continuous flow and very smooth functioning of lean.

The water spider is a beetle which moves inside the water not on the surface focussing on its targets without deviating its attention.

1. A spider works within the process

A good way to remember this is that while the water beetle dives into the water (dives into the process, gets close to the operation, even goes into the operation to do occasional relief work for operators) the water strider skims across the surface and does not get close to the process. The “Water Spider” in Lean must be intimate with the process or operation they support, not just a pick-up-and-drop-off material handler.

2. A spider keeps the workplace clean

The Japanese always have a reason for their terms. The word for water spider in Japanese literally means "make water cleaner" or "purify water". I don't know if this little beetle actually cleans the water or not. You would have to ask an entomologist. The water beetle does have little broom-like fibres on its rear legs, so perhaps that's how it "cleans the water". Or perhaps it was noticed that water spiders only lived in the clear water so they were given credit for making it clean.

3. A spider facilitates flow

If we suppose that the water spider makes the water clean or keeps it clean, the human water spider in Lean also keeps the flow in the factory or in the process clean and smooth by taking on the occasional tasks (tasks that do not happen every cycle, such as material and tool replenishment or making shipping containers). A clean process flow and defined work sequence (clear flowing water) is also a requirement for designing the workload of the Water Spider position.

4. A spider is always moving

The spider ensures that JIT is happening, just the right amount of materials and supplies at the right time in the right place. The spider fills in where needed to keep flow going. The spider communicates, facilitates, and helps. The spider has the overview of flow. Continuous flow is the spider’s focus – and removal of obstacles is his mission.

5. A spider’s job should be systematic

He should have a route, a time line, and a system to do everything. He is a generalist who gets along with everyone.

With this enthralling exercise the customer could reap the following advantages:

• One-piece flow production, counterclockwise
• Small, inexpensive machines in process order
• Ergonomically-correct operations
• Standing operations, moving while working
• Pull system discipline eradication of push system
• “Standard operations” defined and implemented
• Creates a system which is intolerant of production abnormalities
• Reduces lead times
• Maintains a consistent, high product quality
• Reduces the requirements for capital investment
• Reduces staffing costs
• Ensures on-time delivery

To know more about this project / concept, please write to [email protected]. We would love to hear your comments on this story.

WWL is committed towards customer satisfaction and sustaining the same. With our Pan India presence, it’s easy for the customers to approach us any time. Our scope of services is available not just for large corporates, but also for any type of enterprise with minimum requirements for supply chain.

For more information, kindly get into our website: www.go2wwl.com or click on the link to view our Corporate video: https://youtu.be/vaK8iySxxWI.