AskLDI Case Studies – Manufacturing Sector Short Stop Reduction

Analysis of the production system resulted in the identification of output from the manufacturing area is too low. Further drill down analysis identified that short stops was a chronic problem. Short stops made up to a total of 18% lost production with 50% of the short stops coming from raw material feed.

Extra sales were not realized since the customers could purchase more products then we can manufacture. The sales Team identified that all extra production could be sold immediately.

In my role as Chief Production Engineer I was given the task to reduce the short stops of the material feed by a minimum of 50%

We used a global team of internal stakeholders from Sales, Customer Service, Design, Quality and Production personnel.

My mandate was to use the tools and techniques that I learned thru my Practitioner Certification training. Also to utilize the PDCA approach to ensure that sustainability was achieved. We would also recommend where we could expand the improvements throughout similar processes.

We used the Process mapping tool and created a current state, and future state map. We found 11 opportunities to reach the future state VSM with a 90 day execution plan. One of the opportunities was reducing short stops in key manufacturing machines. We found that the material handling, shape and size of the raw material were the drivers for short stops. We increased the size to 40% more every feed. To ensure that works we created a fixture that keeps material in the correct form.

Short stops due to raw material feed reduced by 55%. Productivity increased by 7.5% and we realized a cost savings annually of $110,000