Lean process & Kaizen

Objective and goal

`This objective of this project is to design a lean flow process for Fidel
Engineering, which will be implemented at the shop floor and the office at their
new factory site in Loyang. I recently had my internship at Fidel Engineering at
their old site in Sing Ming Drive. I hope that with the internship experience, Ill be
able to help my team better in this project. To ensure that there will be a
continuous lean process flow in the long-term, it is necessary for the project
group to clearly understand the topic Lean process and Kaizen before
executing the project. This will ensue that the group will be able to propose an
effective lean flow process for Fidel Engineering at the end of the day. Therefore,
this is report is written to lay out my own research and findings as well as
proposed approach to this project. At the end of this project, I really hope that
the lean process flow that we will be designing can help them in their planning,
directing and coordinating the production activities of Fidel Engineering. I also
hope that Fidel Engineering will develop a lean culture within the organization, a
culture that empowers its employees and focuses on the customers.
Research on lean
Lean is philosophy that is about delivering value from your customers
perspective, eliminating waste and continuously improving your processes. Every
waste has a cost which is the direct loss to a company. Lean will also benefit in
reducing costs and improve efficiency, productivity and quality. Why we want to
remove as much waste as possible is so that end customer gets a value. In
manufacturing organizations such as Fidel Engineering, it is often called lean
manufacturing or lean production. While the goal is to reduce waste and create
the most value for the customer, lean also can benefit an organization and its
employees. They are lower operating costs, improve customer satisfaction,
increase efficiency, effectiveness and quality of processes and increase
employees satisfaction and morale. Since the team is required to design lean
process flow for both office and shop floor, I think the project can be broken
down into Lean process flow in office environment and lean manufacturing.
Flow refers to the manner in which work progresses though a system.

The core idea of lean is to maximize customer value. To maximize customer

value, the operating strategy of an organization has to be effective. Thus, the
entire value stream has to be optimized. Value stream is a series of events that
take a product or service from its beginning through to the customer. Through
lean process, an organization will be able to create more value for its customers
where at the same time fewer resources are used. This can be through
simplification and organization or working environment so that waste can be
reduced, keeping employees, equipment and workspace responsive according to
the current situation.

Lean emphasizes the prevention and elimination of waste which are the products
and services that doesnt add value to an organization. The idea is to review all
areas in an organization in order to determine where the non-value added work
is. Its ultimate goal is to provide value with zero waste. They are willing to pay
for their needs. End products will be expensive if they add in unnecessary specs,
such as using much more expensive raw materials. I think that what a customer
wants is always value. They only are willing to pay for what they need. For
example, the products that Fidel Engineering offers to their customers must be
worth what their customers are paying for because when people pays something
for a product or service offered, there are expecting for their money to be well
spent, in other word it is the customers satisfaction. When customers see that
there are minimal or no value offered by an organization, likelihood they will not
engage them in future business and will go elsewhere. Therefore, it is important
to safeguard their interest. There are 2 types of values that I will be talking
about; Value add Vs Non-value add process. Both require resources such as
manpower, time and money. The results of value add is bringing in profit to a
business whereas a waste for non-value adds. What organizations should aim for
is improve Value added process while reducing Non-Value added as much as they
can. Waste costs you and your customers money.

Lets look into more detail about non-value add which is simply waste. Waste
comes in into 3 forms. They are Mura - waste due to variation (unevenness),
Muri -activity asking unreasonable stress or effort from personnel, material or
equipment (overburden or strain). The last one is Muda - 7 types of Waste. The 8
types of waste can be easily remembered by using the acronym Tim woods.
They are Transportation, Inventory, motion, waiting, over-production, overprocessing, defects and skills. By reducing these wastes, quality is improved;
production time and costs are reduced. Next, I will discuss more on each waste
and will try to relate them to Fidel Engineering by identifying the wastes that can
be found during my internship there. In addition, I will be suggestions solutions
that can be implemented to reduce these non-value add processes. In Toyota
production system to eliminate waste, the order of steps is Mura>Muri>Muda.
This is because these wastes (Muri,Mura) are often the underlying causes of
Muda observe in processes.

Mura is the waste of unevenness or inconsistency or variation in the operation of

process. Examples include the uneven use of human resources and machines.
Some of the mare due to fluctuation in customer demand, process times per
product and variation of cycle times for different operators. When Mura is not
reduced, it increases the possibility for Muri and therefore Muda
Muri is to cause overburden which is often caused by Mura and Muda. It refers
more specifically to overburdening an equipment, facility, or human resource

beyond its capacity. When overloading is ignored, this will result in defects,
downtime, delays and even disasters. It also host of other failures in our system
such as lack of training, unclear or no defined ways of working, the wrong tools,
and ill thought out measures of performance. Overburdening of people on other
hand increase the risk of accidents and hence safety is at risk.

Muda The 8 Wastes

Input

Process
1

Process
2

Process
3

Product

Transportation The unnecessary movement of material, tools or equipment

from one location to
another and hence waste
transport waste is waste
generated.
waste
waste
Inventory unnecessary stocks due to untimely delivery, buffers for
abnormality, over-processing and over-production
Motion Unnecessary movements of people such walking due to location of
materials and works. Some of the causes are disorganized work place and
storage locations, poor layout and housekeeping and unclear process of material
flow. Motion waste happens when unnecessary body movements are made when
performing a task. Examples are searching, reaching, walking, bending and
lifting. This creates the disruption of flow of work. Productivity is affected.
Waiting The ideal time generated when material, people, information or
equipment is not ready. E.g. for machines: usually due to waiting for machine to
complete cycle or machine undergoing maintenance.
Over-production This happens when we produce more than what is needed,
resulting in idle finished goods inventory which takes up space, costing the
company unnecessary expenses just to keep them until they are sold. Some of
the causes include poor production planning, line imbalance, poor
scheduling/shifting and volume incentives.
Over-processing Muda due to over- processing ahead of required, this is very
visual when inventory piling up long before it needed for next process
Defects This is due to producing defect, if this is not eliminated, the cost will
go up because of wastage in materials, process labour and the labour to repair
and tracking.
Skills- Under-utilizing capabilities, delegating tasks with inadequate training. We
should assign employees to tasks that are relevant to their skills.
Few Lean tools
Value stream mapping (VSM)- A lean exercise used to help participants see and
understand the flow of material and information through the value stream. A
value stream mapping is a lean enterprise technique used to document, analyse

and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or

service for a customer. This is through analysing the current state of an
organization and projecting its future state.
5s - A tool that helps to Eliminate waste that results from a poorly organized
work area and increase productivity of processes. With 5s, workplace will be
orderly maintained. 5S stands for 5 steps approach to achieve its objective. They
are sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain.
Just-In-Time (JIT) - Pull parts through production based on customer demand
instead of pushing parts through production based on projected demand. It is
highly effective in reducing inventory levels and space.
Kaizen - A strategy where employees work together proactively to achieve
regular, incremental improvements in the manufacturing process.
Research on Kaizen
Kaizen on other hand is an improvement tool which focuses on continuous
improvement. Kaizen is one of the foundations of lean under continuous
improvement (lean supports continuous improvement). A continuous
improvement which takes small, doable steps toward improvement or one small
step at a time. Small improvements doesnt mean that the outcome will be small,
they can lead to a higher level of efficiency throughout the whole lean system as
small changes are added together over time . Accumulation of small
improvements will eventually lead to big results. It involves everyone in an
organization; management, managers, supervisors to workers. What I admire
about it is that everyone will have a role to play in Kaizen which will not just
brings goodwill to an organization but also a sense of belonging at the
workplace. Supervisors and workers will be able to share suggestions and ideas
in regards to the processes or small things in their department that can be
improved to the upper management, therefore making a room for productive
improvement. It is because every employee are experience and knowledgeable
at performing their tasks daily. Getting them involved will help them contribute
to the development of the organization. The upper management may not aware
of certain problems hiding in an organization that may affect its productivity
where employees on the other hand are aware but never speak up due to fear of
getting rejected. During my internship at Fidel Engineering, there are certain
machines that always cause problems which resulted in increase in maintenance
cost of running machines. There is a need to identify the root cause of it to come
out with a constructive action.

The small steps that Kaizen promotes can bring change that is both lasting and
powerful. Ive read various sources which stated that Kaizen, a Japanese word
which means good change. Business may be sceptical towards small steps that
Kaizen adapts in providing goodwill to them. They seldom realise that these
small improvements can produce immediate gains in productivity and quality.

There are 2 strategies for change, innovation and kaizen. Innovation may or may
not work when solving for solutions. Innovation is a dramatic, sweeping change
where is usually executed within a short amount of time. They can arise when a
problem is too big to ignore and the management starts to do something about it
in a radical way. It usually involves radical risks such as huge investment of
money, time, people or goodwill. There is always a probability of the innovation
to bring down an organization or part of it, such as the affected departments. I
will take this insight that Ive gained and share with my group so that we will be
able to drive the way of attending to change, whenever needed in Fidel
Engineering. I would want to promote Kaizen as an ideal strategy for responding
to a change as compared to innovation. Looking psychologically, radical change
sets off our brains fear response and shuts down our ability to think clearly and
creatively. In addition, people are already isolated from their day-to-day
responsibilities. The small steps approach in Kaizen allows our intellectual
process to flow without any obstructions.
Some of the benefits of Kaizen are:
-

Improve production process

Increase quality by reducing mistakes/defects
Reduce costs
Reduction of waste ( Muda - 7 deadly wastes)
Improve Safety
Workplace efficiency
Immediate results
Increase customer satisfaction as quality improved with fewer
faults/defects
Boost morale and productivity of staffs
Continuous small improvements eventually add up to major benefits

My Proposal
During the first visit to the new location of Fidel Engineering, the company have
just shifted there for one week and only the fabrication area has not yet shifted
into the new premise. Before the visit, I realised that the reason why lean
process cannot be implemented into the new layout for Fidels new location is
due to the arrangement of the machines on the site where all CNC machines are
placed, and some other machines such as the wirecut. I understand that the final
arrangement of the machines is due to limited of space. This imposes us a
challenge to design a lean flow for workers to follow as during observation,
there is no flow that can be created in that particular section of the factory. The
CNC machines are scattered and work areas for workers to do machining are
quite small. Looking at the current situation of Fidel Engineering, there are few
ideas currently that I can think of to help improving the process flow of their
work. The team will need to get feedback from Mr Poon How wan on this matter.

Implement 5s tool for shop floor 5s is the post popular lean tool that most
companies adopting to lean uses. It is the first step towards being a lean

enterprise. It is a system of visual for workplace organization. It helps to enhance

productivity, quality and safety at the workplace through the good housekeeping
techniques (Sort, set, shine, standardize, and sustain). Sort involves eliminating
items that are not needed. During the visit, we spotted unnecessary items such
as personal belongings (E.g: Footwear, water bottle) in working area, wires from
machines hanging low at eye level and tools are not properly organized. They
need to be sorted out and cleaned. The next process is set whereby things that
are necessary such as tools are organized in orderly manner in working areas.
Problems in the workplace such as misplacement of tools will be reduced as the
workers will know where to find the right tool for the right task. Time for
searching tools will also be reduced. Working area will be organized and clean
which can help to boost morale of the workers. For shine, an idea I have in mind
is implementing floor marking for the shopfloor as currently there isnt any. I
would like the aisleway to be marked in in yellow. Next is standardize where we
ensure that conditions do not deteriorate to former state. Lastly is sustain where
it is more of the responsibility of employees & management to ensure that there
is commitment to continue in maintaining the orderliness and to practice the first
3s in the workplace.

Safety implementation During the walk to the factory, I noticed that some of
the workers do not conform to safety standards / PPE when operating the
machines and other ad-hoc works. I also did observe this particular problem
during my internship at Fidel Engineering. This increase the risk of workers
getting injured at work. How this affects lean is the flow of work will get
interrupted if workers have to attend to emergency needs. When safety and 5s
combine together, it is called lean 6S. Thats the direction that I think the team
should focus on at the start of the project.