Insight on Manufacturing

May 2013

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INSIGHT FROM ... Doug Bengson, president of Headwaters Excellence Partners Effective efficiency A better way to lay out your plant Many shops are laid out something like this: You buy a machine. You buy another machine and put it next to the first. Repeat until you buy the last machine you could possibly fit … and put it in the last nook or cranny available. At some point, you might decide to get "efficient," move similar machines next to each other, and call them "departments" and say, "This is efficient, right?" Oh, but yes Virginia, even job shops can flow, and it has a lot to do with how they are laid out. Yet people say, "We've always done it this way," or "Why change if it's working?" These words bring a cringe to anyone passionate about continuous improvement. Truth be told, CI zealots can become ingrained in the way they approach improvement activities. Take for example, plant layout. Every plant layout project I've been involved in has been done in more or less the same way. In a nutshell, the way I've always approached plant layout is: 1. Draw the plant shell to scale on large format paper and paste it to a magnetic backing. 2. Draw all the machines to scale and paste them to magnets. 3. Draw spaghetti diagrams to show the part flow. 4. Rearrange the machines to make the spaghetti diagram less messy. This works. At least, it's better than when layouts are not planned. But there is a better way. The methods described below were applied in a High Mix, Low Volume (HMLV) job shop. These methods apply equally well to any HMLV or custom product manufacturer. When Ideal Products Inc. of Oshkosh was planning to relocate to a new facility (see July 2012 IOM), David Verhoff, president of Ideal, asked me, "How can we use the information in our system to do a better job laying out our new plant?" This question presented a unique opportunity to break past some of the traditional barriers to job shop layout: » Hundreds or thousands of unique parts that are not easily grouped into a manageable number of product families » Extensive use of shared machines » Difficulty in identifying flow through the shop These barriers also make it difficult to apply aspects of lean in a job shop. Even job shops can flow, and it has a lot to do with how they are laid out. Yet people say, 'We've always done it this way,' or 'Why change if it's working?' These words bring a cringe to anyone passionate about continuous improvement. A better shop layout process Ideal formed a cross-functional team. Issues with the current layout were identified. Objectives for the new layout included: 1. Improve velocity and flow of parts 2. Improve communication between work centers 3. Reduce work in process inventory 4. Reduce travel distance for parts 5. Reduce need for material handling 6. "Visual factory" part staging 7. Smoother scheduling 8. Minimize changeover time 9. Increase employee engagement to improve flow I set out to develop a database program to use existing routing and equipment data to enable a stronger job shop layout. In a nutshell, this included: 1. Equipment analysis: Identify similar machines. 2. Routing analysis: Auto-assign parts to product families based on their routings, and enable mass changes to part routings. continued > w w w.in s i g h t o n m f g . c o m May 2013 • / insight on manufacturing | 21

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