Search Results for: #LeanManufacturing,

Apr 30 2020

The Impact Of Social Distancing On Assembly Operations | John Shook | LEI

 

Testing temperature measurement setup

“Problems and Countermeasures at GE Appliances and Herman Miller:

  • Problem 1: Clarify what is the problem to solve 
  • Problem 2: Ensure each member is coming to work healthy 
  • Problem 3: Make assembly line work safe for social distancing 
  • Problem 4: Maintain social distance for Team Leader Andon response 
  • Problem 5: Apply social distancing to other, non-assembly line, work areas 
  • Problem 6: Resolve the many other safety concerns that are cropping up 
  • Cleaning surfaces 
  • Cleaning air – Ventilation 
  • PPE
  • …”

Source lean.org

Michel Baudin‘s comments:  John Shook’s writings are usually more polished. This one feels like notes from conversations with managers from GE Appliances (GEA) and Herman-Miller (HM). It goes straight into the heart of the matter with no lead or introduction and with acronyms that are not defined but easy to decypher, like “TT” for Takt Time. This tone actually infuses the article with a sense of urgency. It reads like an unvarnished look at what is actually happening and it contains many informative photographs of the shop floors.

For each problem, GEA and HM give pointers on making assembly work safe from COVID-19 but I have a few questions the article does not address:

  1. How do you protect assembly workers from infection through the products? Social distancing protects them from each other’s breaths but an infected worker’s hand can contaminate a workpiece. The workpiece can then, in turn, infect the next worker’s hand. The article does not discuss means of disinfecting workpieces between stations.
  2. What does distancing do to assembly operations? For decades, we have been bringing workstations closer together, to make it easier for operators to help each other and run multiple stations when the volume is lower. Now, we have to go in the opposite direction.

#socialdistancing, #assembly, #leanmanufacturing, #covid19

By • Blog clippings • 1 • Tags: , , ,

Jan 6 2020

Kei Abe, unsung Japanese genius | Hansjörg Wyss | Swiss Made

Hanjörg Wyss

Swiss Made is a 2013 book by James Breiding and Gerhard Schwarz about the successes of Swiss companies. It came to my attention for a paragraph that celebrates the contributions of my mentor Kei Abe as a consultant to Synthes and its charismatic CEO Hansjörg Wyss. As I was with Kei Abe on several occasions at Synthes and witnessed his interactions with Wyss and with engineers, I can attest that the following quote from the book is true:

“Hansjörg Wyss consolidated and expanded the Swiss orthopedic industry, becoming in the process one of Switzerland’s most successful and wealthy entrepreneurs. Wyss’s career is a tale of conquering the US market and then managing to consolidate the Swiss orthopedic industry, gobbling up one competitor after another — while effectively remaining the controlling shareholder. […] In 2011, Wyss sold Synthes to Johnson & Johnson for $21.3B.

The unsung Japanese genius

[…]The unsung hero of the company was Kei Abe, […] who managed to come up with novel designs for three decades. According to Wyss, Abe helped Synthes by ‘constantly forcing change in manufacturing, bringing new ideas and concepts for machines, thus enabling us to be at the forefront of new technology and having the best margins in the device industry.’

Of the overall strategy, Wyss remarks that ‘competitors thought we were crazy, but this is what kept the company one step ahead and gave us 10% higher margins'”

The book’s authors are journalists and had embellished the story with untrue statements that I edited out. No, Kei Abe was not a professor and never claimed to have “established the Kanban system” at Toyota. He was an aeronautics engineer from Tokyo University who went to work as a motorcycle designer for Honda, later joined the JMA and started his own consulting group, Management & Technology Japan in 1984, where I joined him in 1987.

On my last visit to Synthes, in Switzerland and without Kei, I remember pointing to a machine in a cell and telling my host “This looks like Kei’s handy work.”  He confirmed that it had indeed been based on his input.

#synthes, #keiabe, #hansjoergwyss, #leanmanufacturing

 

By • Web scrapings • 0 • Tags: , , ,

KarakuriKaizenManga2

Oct 29 2019

The Manga Style In The Japanese Literature On Manufacturing

A unique characteristic of the Japanese literature on manufacturing is its use of comic strips — or manga — to communicate with readers. The subject came up in a recent discussion on LinkedIn, that Mark DeLuzio started by saying:

“Toyota has been given credit for making the complex simple. Some say that this is the definition of genius. I think that the Lean consulting industry, in their attempt to help others follow Toyota’s footsteps, has in many cases done the opposite. We have made the simple very complex.”

My comment was that, while expressed in jargon, most of what goes as “Lean” in the US is simplistic. I contrast it with what I found in Japan, like the Kojo Kanri (工場管理, or “Factory Management”) monthly. It is full of case studies communicated in manga, on subjects ranging from the strategic to the tactical.

Continue reading…

By • Uncategorized • 0 • Tags: , , ,

Pick-to-Light bin Nefit_3_680x382

Jul 30 2019

Is Pick-to-Light More Than A Stepping Stone?

Pick-to-Light directs manual picking by lighting up bins. The Lean literature is mute about it, it’s not in the Industry 4.0 technology stack, and Wikipedia doesn’t have an article about it. Pick-to-Light system suppliers are touting it as part of both Lean and Industry 4.0 but no one else is chiming in. In the field, however, you find it in many factories, where it reduces training time and picking errors, while increasing picker productivity.

Pick-to-Light fits best in usability engineering. It’s neither jidoka nor automation because it just prompts the operator. And it’s not Poka-Yoke because it doesn’t physically prevent mistakes, the way flip-lids can. It looks like an intermediate technology, a stepping stone on the way to full picking automation but is it? It can also be viewed as a move towards using technology to make work easier for people instead of automating it.

Continue reading…

By • Automation • 1 • Tags: , , , , ,

Sep 3 2018

10 Lean Manufacturing Ideas for Machine Shops | Shahrukh Irani | Modern Machine Shop

Machined Workpiece

“Lean manufacturing as it is traditionally practiced is of benefit to machine shops, but the extent of its benefit is often limited. The Toyota Production System on which lean manufacturing is based was designed for assembly plants that produce automobiles by the thousands. While an assembly plant focuses on low-mix, high-volume production, a typical machine shop focuses on high-mix low-volume production. A machine shop and assembly plant cannot expect to realize the same lean benefits with the same lean tools.”

Source Modern Machine Shop

Michel Baudin‘s comments: Shahrukh and I have long disagreed on these issues and I still take exception to many of his general statements. On the other hand, I agree with most of his recommendations.

Machining is not all about High-Mix/Low Volume

While there may be many small machine shops doing high-mix/low-volume production, the bulk of machining is done in larger Automotive and Aerospace & Defense shops that don’t fit this description. Automotive machine shops remove small amounts from hundreds of thousands of aluminum castings/year with product lives on the order of 4 years; aerospace machine shops, large amounts from forgings in exotic alloys in the hundreds/year with product lives in decades.

Continue reading…

By • Blog clippings • 2 • Tags: ,

%d bloggers like this: