Food Production – Kaizen

We are a $25 billion food business company and our plant that produces dried product for industrial and food service applications.

Throughput on machine #3 has slowly reduced from 13,500 lbs. / hr. to 12,000 lbs. / hr. over a period of 3 yrs. This increased the number of days the machine must be in operation to complete the annual workload that lasts approx. 5 months. This resulted in $140,000 of additional operating costs. Several ad hoc changes to the machine have been made over the past 3 years with no measurable impact on throughput.

Using a Kaizen process, my team (Practitioner Certified) facilitated a team of Operators, Mechanics, Engineers and Supervisors to utilize problem-solving tools and techniques to restore machine #3 throughput back to 13,500 lbs./hr.  The start of the next pack season was only 3 months away, so corrective actions needed to be implemented immediately.

The Team members used the Kaizen approach with documented Kaizen sheet. The appropriate root cause analysis tools were used to attack this problem

A detailed execution plan was finalized with sign off by the Management Team.   

The Team took a GEMBA walk to fully understand and validate the function and current condition of the equipment. We then created and grouped the info into 4M Fishbone diagram. The top 5 issues in frequency were run through the 5Why analysis to identify root causes. A complete list of key issues/counter measures(using the countermeasure ladder) was generated and an action plan to close was agreed upon by the team and presented to plant management for buy in.

After completion of the action plans, machine #3 throughput reached 13,500 lb./hr. throughput. All changes were documented, visual controls were added to the equipment, a maintenance plan developed, and key operators were trained on proper set up and operation of the machine.

The Energy industry is getting more and more price competitive. Our competitors are under cutting prices to win the business. We have defined a key KPI in the market that enables us to keep prices on a somewhat higher level, if this KPI is at an outstanding level. The KPI is Lead time from order to delivery. A major part of that lead time is design and release to manufacturing

The Lead time for Design request to delivery of product is too long averaging 38 days. We have lost business as a result.

My Team was set with the task of a reduction of lead time from incoming design request, to product release for manufacturing.

The target was set to a Lead Time of 10 days

We used a universal cross functioning team of internal stakeholders from Sales, Customer Service, Design, Quality and Production.

We used the PDCA approach with an internal Practitioner Certified led facilitator, to ensure sustainability and expanded the process on an international level.

We created a Process map to understand the current state and identified the losses. The Team was trained in flow and design to deliver methodologies. We developed a future state map and identified 8 projects that would take us to our target. All projects were successfully executed using Practitioner Certified support, with all project KPIs met.

The results were Lead time reduced from 38 days to 3 days

We secured mew business as a direct consequence with annual revenue of $850,000

We are a $40 million hydraulic component business company and our plant that produces cylinders to mobile equipment.

We had done a flow analyzes and found that a CNC machine was limiting our ability to produce the number of variants we needed. The set-up time was too long and the variation between operators around 100%.

Using a SMED process, our team (they are now Practitioner Certified) worked with the team of operators and followed parts of the SMED process. We chose to concentrate on two things.

1. Training of operators
2. Moving internal work to external work

We used an A3 sheet and worked for one week. We followed the PDCA approach to the focused areas and had Management visiting every morning to get support and to allow them to be informed. A detailed execution plan of the training for all shifts and replacement operators was finalized with sign off by the Management Team.   

We video filmed the set-up we chose to focus on and chose the most experienced operator to learn as a team, he also learned since some team members had a really good way of dealing with some tasks. We watched the video together and discussed the content and mad e the detailed plan together before developing One Point Lessons and started to train everyone.

After completion of the action plans, the machine set-up for the chosen set-up type was reduced with 53% and the variation was +/- 5%. We kept the follow up on our daily meeting board to. Make sure we hold the gains.

We are a $90 million Automotive product business. We make components for cars.

In one of our production cells we found that our OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) was just over 50% and we struggled to deliver. The OEE was varying a great deal and we found it stressful to try to meet the demands.

We started to collect data for short stops (minor/small stops) because we didn’t have that many breakdowns. Our data showed that we had operator missing for 38% of the time. We added a spaghetti chart for some operators to understand movements.

Using a Kaizen approach and PDCA thinking, we gathered the data and found that operators where asked to do several activities away from the machines, such as first piece inspection, moving material, data logging, SPC, etc. We locked at the countermeasure ladder and as a team we developed an idea to add a water spider. The reasoning we had was that the activities outside of the machine has to happen, so we have to find a way to do that without losing production time. A cost and benefit calculation showed that if we could add one person, we could eradicate close to 100% of the short stops.

The presented the findings and the calculation to the management who realized that we were correct.

We added 1-person per shift and followed the short stops for 2 months.

We found that we still had shorts tops and the team met again. It became clear that we needed a signaling system to alert the water-spider. We added Andon lights to support that and kept following the data. Loss eradicated.

We increased the sales and output and the cost was deducted from the calculation. (I’m not allowed to share the USD for that)

We made sure we had SOPs for all activities and trained all persons.

In the past, I struggled to speak in front of people. It was a real struggle and I was very fortunate to break that mindset.

I meet people who feel that speaking in front of people might kill them. For them the fear is real and I totally understand that.

Here’s my story. I hope it inspires you.

When customers ask me how I create visions I ket them know how I practice…they are always surprised.