Examples of Lean Manufacturing Systems in Job Shops

Indo-MIM, world leader in supply of Metal Injection Moulded Components produces close to 1000 varieties of parts in a quarter. The sales quantities of each of these parts vary from 1000 pieces a month to close to 20 lakh pieces a month. This article discusses the basic principles of Lean and examples of how few concepts of Lean have been implemented in Indo-MIM factory.
What is Lean? The main core of Lean Manufacturing is about eliminating wastes in the business process. The eight non-value adding wastes are 1. Overproduction 2. Waiting 3. Unnecessary Transport 4. Over processing
Dr. T S Shivashankar Ph D Vice President Operations Indo-US MIM Tec Pvt Limited Read this article online at http://www.ezinemart.com/ibm

The journey of Lean Production System which is an oshoot of Toyota Production System has two key aspects to it. One aspect deals with the technical side of Manufacturing and the other aspect deals with the softer, People management side of it. While the latter is the most important aspect of Lean, this article deals with only the technical aspects of Lean with few examples Inventory Reduction Lean Manufacturing proposes a signal system to ensure that inventories are maintained low in the company. Ideally, Zero Inventory is the best, but is not possible given the lead times for manufacturing products and minimum batch quantities required for certain procJuly 2012

5. Excess Inventory 6. Unnecessary Movement 7. Defects 8. Unused Employee Creativity.

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esses. The signal system is referred to as Kanban. Kanban can be a signboard, a card, a token or an empty bin. kanban system of signaling production of a product is similar to the Fuel Indicators in the car. Once the fuel levels comes down, the yellow light in the car blinks indicating that fuel will last only few more kilometers and one has to ll the tank. Today, we have automatic water regulators in our water tanks which kick in the motor when the level goes below the last mark in the tank. Kanban system is all about replenishing or producing goods Just in Time and not way ahead of time. Given below is a pictorial representation of what happens when the inventory levels at Finished Goods Store goes down. Kanban systems should be implemented
Figure 1: The shaded zone represents acceptable levels of inventory and is divided into three segments. As soon as the levels of inventory reaches the segment 1, a Green token is issued to the starting step of the process (in this case Moulding) indicating that inventory had depleted by one segment. When the level comes to segment 2, a yellow token is issued. The Molding department either starts production as soon as they receive Green Token or yellow token or can wait depending on how occupied they are at the time of receiving the token. But moment the red token is issued, its clear that production has to start immediately. The minimum level of inventory is chosen depending on the consumption and lead time to manufacture the product.

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for orders that are routine, where design changes do not happen along the year. Before implanting Kanban, its important that customer knows that you are implementing Kanban system and customer will buy any inventory thats available within the kanban limits when product become obsolete. Avoiding Overproduction Over Production or Producing ahead of time is the other waste that happens in all factories. One common mistake is to allow the plant to follow the Forecasts published by Sales department. . Three things can happen when one builds based on forecasts and at the same time the customer is not involved in that decision. 1) The design can change anytime 2) Customer may close the model on which your part was used and parts become obsolete. 3) Customer might nd another supplier for the same part. At the end of the month, soon one would realize that many forecasts didnt have orders to ship and sales people were promised by the customer that orders would arrive just as they nish the product. Another mistake usually performed by manufacturing head in

Pneumatic Press Department

Drilling Department

Toggle Press Department

Secondary Cells (20 cells), each cell consisting of Pneumatic Presses, Drilling machine, Toggle Press and Inspection table facilitating Single Piece Flow.

Figure3: Picture of Secondary Operations Department at Indo MIM before and after the implementation of Cells. Similar machines that were grouped earlier (top three pictures) were made exible and combined to form a single Secondary cell placed next to each other (bottom two pictures). The Press being heavier cannot be moved, while drilling machines, toggle presses and inspection tables are on wheels that can be moved at will to create a Cell around the heavier press. Pictures Courtesy Ujwal and P Barghi

times of slow down is to produce parts for inventory without any commitment from customer. Building to a forecast as

against an order gives the management a false sense of continued activity in the plant, while the customers demand is not there.The good intentions of keeping machines and people occupied doesnt help since goods are not sold. Taiichi Ohno, the Chief Architect at Toyota believed that if one has more inventory at the plant, it is likely that its a wrong inventory. How many times we have seen that happen in our factories? In Lean manufacturing, machines can be idle, but its a crime to keep people and material idle and waiting. In times of slowdown, the best way to keeping people busy is to use their creative minds and run more kaizens/continuous improvement projects rather than make them run the machines for the sake of

Figure 2: Pictorial Representation of dierences between Batch Processing and Continuous Single Piece Flow Processing inside a Cell.

running.

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Single Piece Flow the core to Lean Manufacturing Next common tool that has the greatest benet in making companies lean is the Single Piece Flow. Its probably the tool thats requires lot of thinking and willpower to implement in shop oor. Single Piece Flow is nothing but manufacturing single piece at a time- the entire chain from start to nish. Imagine a part involving CNC milling, followed by a surface grinding, followed by an assembly with a mating part and then inspection and then nal packaging. In Traditional mass production thinking, similar machines and similarly skilled people are grouped together. Mass Production thinking sets up departments of CNC milling machines, Grinding sections, Pressing and Inspection all separate. The perceived benets of grouping skilled people and equipment together are 1) Economies of Scale and 2) Apparent Flexibility in Scheduling (since CNC Milling manager can schedule his work well when all machines are in one place). Once the similar machines are grouped, material handling department moves material once a certain batch is completed in one department and then moves to another department. Lean Thinking looks at the above methodology as producing Lots of Inventory or WIP. As said earlier, material sitting in one department is a fundamental waste in Lean. The solution is to un-group similar machines and mixing all departments into one and physically having all machines in a serial fashion- one by one. As shown in the gure, single part moves from process A to Process B and then to C and machines that are used to do processes A, B and C are just placed next to each other. Advantages of Single Piece Flow Single piece ow helps in 1) Improving quality, 2) Reducing inventory 3) Reducing lead times 4) Reducing oor space and 5) Reducing unnecessary transportation or Movement The transition from traditional batch processing to Single Piece Flow is usually dealt with lot of skepticism and resistance. However, the benets are usually huge. One important eect is that one can have better control on quality and a sense of order prevails when parts are produced via a single piece ow than

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Locked Drop Box, or a Hundi Gauge

Figure 4: A manual 100% inspection line for a turbocharger vane. At the end of the Inspection line is the locked box tted with a carbide gauge that doesnt allow an un-machined parts to reach customer. Single piece ow while doing 100% inspection is essential to ensure zero defects. Transparent scrap boxes placed in

as a batch. Source Inspection and Poke Yoke which are important to get to zero defects are easily implementable in a single piece ow method than on a batch processing method. Since the operators or persons doing the job almost stand or sit next to each other in a single piece ow, the inspection and reworks are part of the cell.

Visual Factory Similar to one in the Kanban, visual charts and tables are important tools that small job shops can use to display key metrics. The visual factory helps operators, supervisors and the managers see the same data in one place as one walks in the shop oor.

This is lot dierent than what one sees in a power point presentation during Management Review Meetings that are held once in three months. Daily display with actual status and the target makes people think of ways of achieving the target. Discipline in entering the data periodically is important and top management has to drive this.

Figure 5: Feedstock Inventory in Tons in Compounding Department. Data courtesy Laxminarayana, Indo MIM, HSK Plant

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seen in perspective when one looks at the graph as well. The inventory target line of 3 tons is far away from the actual, but the compounding department has over the years reduced the inventory slowly by 4 tons in the last two years. Conclusion The journey of Lean Manufacturing is a continuous one and more importantly a joyful one. The principles are broad, but the actions can be quite unique to a particular organization. The small success that the team or a group or a company experiences during the Lean Journey motivates them to do more next time. The concept of Lean is today more important to Small and Medium EnterTwo such Visual Boards are explained below. One is the Inventory Board at Compounding Department and the other is the 6S (6th S stands for Safety) scores of various departments. The good thing about the Inventory Chart is that one can see daily values in the graph plus the average monthly, yearly values in the table next to the sheet. The trends are important and the trends have to be prises (SME) than Large Enterprises. Importantly, Lean as a philosophy makes a company a Learning Organization. Fuji Cho, Former President, Toyota Motor Corporation says this very nicely We Place the highest value on action implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesnt understand and therefore, we ask them why dont you just go ahead and take action; try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didnt like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement or should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge The author Dr. T S Shivashankar Ph.D is the Vice President Operation of Indo US MIM Tec Pvt Limited, Hoskote,Bangalore
Figure 6: Top Table showing the 6S scores of Various Departments in the rst Quarter of 2012. Below picture shows Secondary Processing Department personnel exulting after winning the 6S trophy for the month of March 2012. Data and Picture, courtesy Arun Balan, Indo- MIM

- 562114. He can be contacted at shivashankar.t@indo-mim.com

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