LEAN IMPLEMENTATION AT WIREMOLD CORPORATION

WHAT IS LEAN?
Lean manufacturing, lean enterprise, or lean production, often simply, "Lean," is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. In other words, lean manufacturing is all about Continual identification, reduction and if possible elimination of Wastages from all the processes to improve overall effectiveness and optimize resource efficiency. Lean Manufacturing focuses on Leaving OLD & BAD habits and adopting NEW & BETTER habits.

The Lean House Diagram

LEAN AT WIREMOLD CORP.

WIREMOLD BACKGROUND
108 years old Product lines: wire management systems, power & data protection equipment and communications devices 12 plant locations in five countries Sell to electrical, electronic & telecommunications distributors.

WIREMOLD STATUS IN 1990-91

Increase in sales by 20%, yet: o Low profit o No Cash o Poor customer service o Losing market share Started spreading awareness about the need of change Started sending executives and facilitators to Japan for training in the lean philosophy

WIREMOLD STATUS IN 1990-91

The major problem was MURA (unevenness in production), which led to a lot of mura, including: o Inventory o Waiting o Overproduction, etc.

WIREMOLD STATUS IN 1990-91

All the current processes were built for batch including: o Forecasting system o Factory layout and equipment base o Computer programs o Warehousing

WIREMOLD STATUS IN 1990-91

Art Byrne, who had a huge experience in the automobile industry, was appointed as president of Wiremold Corp. in 1991. He transformed the face of the organization over a time period of 10 years by applying the following 3 principles: oWork to takt time oUse pull system oRespect for people

WIREMOLD PLANNING OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the Wiremold heijunka system are stated as follows: Achieve a high level of customer service (100% fill rate for warehouse items and 100% on time deliveries for Make To Order / Very Good Order, that falls outside normal demand expectations) Maintain On-Hand inventory levels at 70% of target inventory (5 to 7 days for A-items, 18 to 24 days for C-items) Develop and use a procedure to analyze incoming sales versus Outgoing production so that: Capacity can be provided to meet warehouse replenishment and make to order demand. Orders can be more accurately scheduled and Inventory levels can be stabilized

WIREMOLD PLANNING OBJECTIVES

Develop and use a simple procedure to regularly and consistently adjust inventory, capacity and kanban levels to accommodate changes in demand. Identify significant or recurring problems, investigate root causes and make specific constructive suggestions to improvement the Wiremold Production System. Behavioural change by making each and every employee an integral part of the implementation to encourage kaizen at each level.

RESPECT FOR PEOPLE

To begin with, Wiremold changed its policy about employee respect and leadership. The new code of conduct for leaders and workers included the following:

Give him or her the job as their owngive them responsibility and challenge them Let them think; Let them trydont assume that they cant think, dont try to think for them, respect their competence Help him or her seegive them the tools they need to see Force Reflectionhelp them learn from what they see and what they trylet them stop and see what the lesson is

HOW THE WIREMOLD SYSTEM OPERATES

The Heijunka box is in use on every cell within Wiremold. Made up of two sections the top section is used to schedule the cell output, its use is explained in the illustration and description that follows the bottom section is used to schedule orders from the warehouse to the cell. Used also to replenish the supermarkets.

HOW THE WIREMOLD SYSTEM OPERATES

The planner prints tickets. If the group leader prints tickets, they are placed in the Tickets pending decision section of the heijunka unless the ticket does not have a due date and is a standard warehouse part number. These tickets are placed in the black overflow area of the warehouse heijunka. For all other tickets, the planner then schedules work based on daily available capacity in cell. Colored clips to group a certain amount of work are used. If the cell has 1 hour of capacity per day, 1 hours worth of work is clipped together.

At the end of the scheduled workday, the group leader moves tomorrows cards from the this week location to the today location.
At the end of the scheduled workweek, the group leader moves each week of cards up in the box to the previous week and adjusts dates.

SCHEDULING PROCEDURE
Based on the Capacity Available to Promise, each team decides how much capacity can be promised on a daily basis in each cell. When an order comes in, the planner simply looks at when the next available capacity occurs, and then determines how long it will take to finish the order. If the capacity available is insufficient to meet the customer demand, additional manpower can be added to the cell.
If manpower is added, Wiremold calculate conversion ratio to help plan capacity. Conversion ratio = Total output / time worked Not all cells will operate at 100%. If a cell operates 2800 minutes per day and produces 2100 minutes worth of work, the conversion ratio is 75%. Therefore, adding an additional 420 minutes of labor to a cell results in a 315-minute capacity addition.

SCHEDULING PROCEDURE
Other factors that are taken into consideration when planning capacity are: The identification of items that have constraints or bottlenecks at the component fabrication level. The identification of items that have constraints in raw material leadtime. For these items, Wiremold first establish capacities or a schedule at these levels of the process before proceeding with the final scheduling process itself.

WAREHOUSE SECTION OF THE WIREMOLD HEIJUNKA

The warehouse section of the Wiremold heijunka box used schedule the cells is described below. When replenishment warehouse supermarket inventory is required cards are received the cell and a card is placed into the slot for that part number signal that product needs to be manufactured. to of at to

WAREHOUSE TICKET LOADING PROCEDURE

The first step is to separate printed tickets by cell. Then match the catalogue part number and the warehouse number on the card with the label on the heijunka box. Each card carries a reference to the warehouse to which the product belongs as there are a number of small warehouses in use. Cards are placed into the heijunka box starting with the green section and working up the heijunka box filling each slot with the number of cards shown on the label, until all cards are gone.

WAREHOUSE TICKET LOADING PROCEDURE

Cards are placed into the black area signify that the warehouse may be short or out of stock of a part. Make to order cards take precedence and are scheduled first; this is a direct customer demand for an item that may not be held in the supermarket, followed by those cards in the black area.

All cards in the black area should be manufactured first prior to any cards in the red area. Then production of items in the yellow area and onto the green area. In this way, a priority is set in the cell to ensure immediate customer needs are met followed by replenishment of product to the warehouse.

PULL PROCEDURE FOR CARDS

The group leader pulls out cards for the next job and checks to see if all material is available. If all material is available, the group leader prints out labels, places tickets in the schedule box and labels on top of box. If material is not available, the group leader places a colored flag in the warehouse slot. A red flag denotes a quality problem; a blue flag denotes an internal supply problem, i.e. parts not available from an Upstream process, a black flag denotes a supplier problem, a machine breakdown or tooling issue. The supervisor of the cell is responsible to expedite solutions for any flags posted in a timely manner, if unable to find a quick resolution the issue is elevated within the organization.

THE LEAN EFFECT

WIREMOLD BEFORE AND AFTER LEAN

SET-UP TIME REDUCTION

IMPROVED INVENTORY TURNOVER

STRONG EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

GROSS MARGIN IMPROVEMENT

CONCLUSION
Wiremold have developed and tailored the use of their heijunka to their specific environment, it could be said that others could use many of the aspects of their system. The basic concepts could be applied in a number of similar industries, in particular where customer demand can suddenly increase dramatically, in Wiremold terms a VGO (very good order) Moreover, the time and effort they have expended on ensuring that all of their personnel understand very clearly their roles and responsibilities. The way in which they have developed rules and check adherence to these in order to ensure excellent customer service could be said to be a model to be envied.

THANKYOU
PRESENTED BY: AKRITI DIXIT(1) SAKSHI KHURANA(14) SUGANDHA RATHORE(20)