It’s Really About Time

I agree that set-up time is important. My team handles a lot of data. We have found that making sure it's properly organized at the beginning of the process makes all of the remaining steps go much more efficiently - which in turn, improves our cycle time.

Taking the time to evaluate the process is what contributes to our sustainability. Without process improvements we would not be able to do what we do today (about 2x as much as a few years ago) with the same number of or less people.

Thank you SavvyExacta. I could see how getting the dataset normalized up front can save your team lots of time.I agree about the drive for continuous improvement being enabled by your time focus.

Milo

You appear to have skipped over just-in-time. Finished product hanging around unsold or undelivered is tying up working capital that could be used to shorten lead-time or reduce time-to-market for your new products. If the ethos behind the running of your company is going to dictated by fads and buzz words, you may have dropped the ball, and left it lying in the warehouse for far too long.

Thanks JHassociates! appreciate the additions.

milo

All four of these times should be KPI's and, crucial too good OEE. So you can't actually just focus on the most en-vogue time, you have to keep monitoring all of them. Then you know you'll have all the information you'll need to identify target areas for improvement or indicators when things do go astray.

Agreed!

Milo

Its about time to educate and empower the employees. The person that does an operation 8 hours a day for many years knows more about that operation than any manager, engineer, or accountant. Listen to the employees and find ways to shorten setup time, reduce run time, and even improve the widget. The pool of employees that are informed and empowered can make a big difference on the bottom line.

Yes, but be careful to evaluate the employee suggestions. If "Necessity" is the mother of invention, then "Lazy" is the father. I have witnessed where workers decided that eliminating steps in a process would just make their work easier, and produce a product faster, but at the cost of an inferior product that lowered the value of the product.

Machine availability or up time should be the lead consideration. No matter what other process or plan we improve it all revolves around availability.

I have worked as a plant engineer been involved with 6 sigma, lean six and a lot of other performance projects. I have seen in too many cases where it all went down the tubes due to down time.

I have found that a good solid PM program and dedicated technicians will make one of the largest improvements to the bottom line.

A lot of companies will spend huge sums of money researching and implementing their latest and greatest process improvement plans and little or nothing on maintenance.

Time would be far better spent researching what would be the greatest pay back on the investment.

JMHO

Maybe I'm too ignorant, or too old fashioned but I think that all these new industrial philosophies solve problems created by themselves, for example; if you consider the set-up time to be the most important time to keep controlled, then you know that the less set-up changes, the more up time etc. etc. = more money.

OK so far so good; but when you have to run small batches of endless different product models or part numbers, thanks to the on-demand principle, you are in deep trouble, you wear out your machinery (loosening and tightening screws, sliding parts friction etc.) and you have less up-time.

But why does this happen? Oh! that's because some oriental genius figured a tactic to eliminate stock, to pull rather than push and God knows what else. SURE ! they have not too much space to keep a decent stock, and besides their suppliers are not too far away (for the same reason).

My other theory is much worse: They, officiusly created a doctrine to convince and deceive westerners into a fallacy, just to sabotage their industry.

As I said, I might be too near sigthed to fully understand those principles, but before you call me a liar, just watch where the whole world economy is going to.

High mix low volumes is a different challenge thsn low mix high volume manufacturing. You are mot nearsighted, you correctly see the difference. Thanks for your comment. Milo