Tips and Advices - Lean Manufacturing and Production Management Implementation in 10 Steps

This week an old colleague of me has asked me for some Tipps about Work Organization and Process optimization within the Lean concept. As this topic can be useful for more engineers with these targets, I decided to share a macro summary of my experiences in the automotive and metal-mechanic industries.

These suggestions and concepts may work in any environment that have machines, people and material flow combination. The expected results and motivation to move forward:

The implementation I’ve made, have the following results: increase the productivity more than 30% and production more than 12%

I hope it helps your company, and if still remain some questions or topics, feel free to contact me.

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1st Step: Organizational Structure

It is important to have a organized and clear function in your production floor. Who is in charge for each job must be defined and explained to each member of the company, so that the system runs quickly and without external intervention.

For that, you must design your structure based on the size, issues and demands of your company. The main point is to be as lean as possible to save costs, but assuring that no function would be overloaded, avoiding lost by late response for issues.

A suggested structure would be:

·??Operators: Responsible for daily production tasks - operate machines and make parts measurements. They should be trained to identify problems and suggest improvements. They must concentrate energy on run the process continuously.

·??Team Leaders / Process Leaders: Directly responsible to support the operators and for the production’s goals. They also act as facilitators to resolve technical issues and implement improvements. In resume, the main task here is to keep the machines / production running and improving every day, but they are not directly / personal leader for the operators. Experience shows the a healthily proportion between Team leader and operator would be 1 to 7.

·??Supervisors: This has the normal hierarchy to the operators and team leaders. They are the responsible for the personal and HR subjects for his team. The suggestion would be 1 supervisor for each 5 to 7 team leaders’ group. The supervisors must help the Team leaders with the persons tasks, give targets + resources and also be the bridge from PL and managers.

·??Analysts / Engineers / Support Areas: Responsible to support the production, prepare all documentation, organize and implement improvements and new projects. They have to assure that the machines or resources are dimensioned for the production.

·??Managers: Manage specific areas of the factory, increasing or balancing the available resources, ensuring strategic objectives are met. The managers can move resources between supervisors’ areas as well as supply more resources (time; money; people) to an area achieve the target. They orientated the supervisors and support continuous improvement initiatives. In resume, they define the “How” of the strategic vision and the priorities.

·??Director: Oversees the entire factory operation, defining the strategic vision and overall performance objectives.

?2nd Step: VMS - To have a good Analyze of where you are

At this phase you have to involve a representant of all areas inside your process and they have t be engaged to describe the current process as realistic as possible, including all challenges and issues the different departments are facing.

For this phase the most recommended tool are: VSM for production area and Lane Diagram to administrative activities or documentation flow.

Best practices from my side suggest that for the mapping you will need experienced moderator and an assistant to help with the board during the moderation and brain storming. It is not recommended sections longer than 3 hours, and even make 2 breaks other leave the participants free to move and take coffee during the sections.

?3rd Step: Waste Reduction

Now that you have the complete overview of your process it is time to identify the wastes and define actions to them. The not necessary waste must be eliminated and the necessary (but still waste) must be reduced as minimal possible.

• Identify and eliminate the seven types of waste: overproduction, waiting time, transportation, over-processing, excess inventory, unnecessary motion and defects.
• Implement practices like Just-in-Time (pull production) and Kanban to reduce inventory and minimize waste

4th Step: VSD - To have the vision of where you want to go

With a good map of what is the current process and the wastes and issues on it, you are able to build the target process. What would be the perfect or ideal process. The ideal process maybe is not reachable now, with the current recourses, so you build based on it, intermediary VSDs.

To reach the VSDs you define action and responsible. This should be part of the vision and targets from high board to operator.

?5th Step: Define KPIs

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” – W. Edwards Deming

What we don’t measure, we do not control and so we cannot improve. In this topic, the advice is to care about over control. Most of companies wants and goes for multiple KPIs, what make very difficult to keep it alive. When the team have to focus in many different targets at the end, they are not having real focus and sure wasting energy (resources).

You have to choose the real value added KPIs, the one that will make difference in your business. My experience 4 or 5 KPIs are core business, the other are secondary. You will find them at your VSD.

?6th Process Boards

After KPIs definition, you will need to keep them alive and manage your shopfloor. The best practice I have seen were the process boards and the daily meetings. A standard board for the process leaders, Supervisors and Managers will increase the communication between your organization and assure that the numbers from shop floor will reach the decision board on time. The meeting standards also are very important to achievement of success, there fore I strongly suggest to create a meeting script.

During my implementation I used to apply metal board with magnetics elements, so you get flexibility to adapt and change conforming the evolution of the team.

?7th Step: PDCAs, Kaizens and Six Sigma Projects

To keep the KPIs in target and / or to control then, you may find the following tools very interesting:

For simple problems, with only one root cause, the PDCA is the most used tool. Easy to understand and apply, but most of the user do not have discipline to complete the cycle. Attention, only a complete PDCA will assure that the problem really not return.

PDCA Steps:

• Plan necessary changes based on VSM and VSD analyses.
• Do changes on a small scale to test their effectiveness.
• Check results through performance indicators.
• Act to standardize successful improvements and implement them throughout the factory

Kaizen is, in most cases, designed to have improvements in your process. For this workshops it is recommended to invite the operators, so you will have a direct user to give ideas.

When you have a complex problem, with many causes, the recommended tool would be a Six Sigma Project.

?8th Step: Achieved Goals recognitions

Implement a recognition program for teams, as well as individual, who achieve performance goals and contribute to continuous improvement.

It is very important to celebrate successes and share lessons learned throughout the organization, because this will increase the motivation and spread enthusiasm.

?9th Step: Continues Improvement

Restart from 2.

Most of companies also do not make continues improvement, reach the 1st VSD or the KPIs and stop. The problem with this approach is the time makes the reached targets and standards obsolete and unusual. It is sad to see companies that capitalized money in training and implementation, wiches get lost with the hole implementation process.

?10th Step: Organization Excellence

The other steps are moving the company to the Excellence, but you have to promote a culture of operational excellence, where the pursuit of continuous improvement is a shared goal among all organization members, from high board to operator..

The company should invest in training and development to empower employees to identify problems, implement solutions, and lead changes.

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Note: I hope the text can help you to build your implementation strategy. If you need any additional information, please feel free to contact me.