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Making lean workBy Amanda Kramer
Amid a well-worn concrete floor that's swept clear and smooth, tall rolling carts sit in perfect alignment, each with "parts bins" shelves color-coded in red, blue and yellow. Typed work instructions, with titles like "Sandblasting" and "Electropolishing," are neatly lined behind a glass case mounted on a wall. And "shadow boards," with hand-traced images of tools like rulers and wrenches, sit on the desks at several work stations -- an effort to make sure employees put tools back in the right places. For the lay person, the precision of the place borders on neurotic. But for the people who work at Fristam, makers of sanitary stainless steel pumps, and other companies across the Capital Region, the appropriate term is lean -- as in lean manufacturing. For more than a decade now, lean has been a top operational improvement strategy for manufacturing in the United States and has remained a concept that can provide a competitive advantage or allow a company to keep their manufacturing here despite shrinking margins. Getting lean The lean philosophy aims to reduce lead and response times to customers and eliminate waste. To get lean, companies often work with consultants from an organization such as the Capital Region's Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership (WMEP) to learn techniques that will work for their operation. "There are a number of things a business can do (to get lean), and it doesn't require a lot of investment in capital or technology," said Mike Klonsinski, WMEP's executive director, who said costs vary widely depending on the size of the company or state of the business, ranging from a few thousand dollars to six figures for large manufacturing operations. "You don't go down and buy a lean manufacturing tool; it's a combination of training your people and then focusing on a very rigorous process to first identify your gaps and identify waste in your operations." First, Klonsinski said, a manufacturing company will highlight a limited number of processes that take place in a plant, like making a particular part on one or two particular lines. Then, the consultant comes in, watches the process and creates an intricate "value stream map" to show areas in the manufacturing process that could be hurting efficiency. In Fristam's case, Vice President of Finance and Administration David Skora said he remembers that the company videotaped almost two hours of manufacturing a pump part, then went over the video, taking notes on the number of times a machinist would have to stop the procedure or run across the factory to look for a hammer. From there, Klonsinski said, the work truly begins. Consultants or company managers start talking with employees about how to eliminate waste, work spaces are cleaned up, tools are organized, and employees are trained in more efficient work tactics. Then, ideally, Klonsinski said, after time has passed and the manufacturing work has been refreshed, the efficiency of the process is measured again, mapped again and adjusted if need be. "What we've found is that you actually get some of your biggest improvements in the second and third times," he said. "Most Americans feel if they find a problem, they fix it and move on, but to get the value of lean, you have to work a problem, remap it and work it again. It's this whole business of continuous improvement." Trilary Inc. Three years ago it was taking Trilary Inc. nearly five weeks to get a bicycle rack or outdoor-furnishing order to a customer, President Tom Graber said. The Middleton company, which manufactures bicycle parking equipment, benches and trash receptacles, couldn't waste that kind of time -- they were growing and needed to find a way to speed up the way they worked. "I'm not sure how I came across it (the lean concept). I think it was a friend of mine who was in the brick and stone business who told me about it," Graber said. "I sent some people to some lean classes. They liked it." "What you really end up doing is you put things in order," Graber said. "Nobody's running around looking for tools. You take a little bit more pride in that area." That little bit of pride has actually turned into some pretty big success. Now a multi-million dollar company with about 22 employees, Trilary can turn an order around in just two to three days. The company's sales growth is up 45 percent since 2003 and, thanks to the implementation of lean, they're moving their two older plants, one on Laura Lane and another on Pinehurst Drive, into one new 33,000-square-foot building in Waunakee in October. "The biggest thing here is that if I wouldn't have gone through this process I could be building a plant that might work but also be very inefficient," Graber said. Burke touts lean Mary Burke, secretary of the state Department of Commerce, can't get enough of lean manufacturing. And that should come as no surprise, since she's been accustomed to the concept for much of her career. Starting back at Trek in the mid- to late '90s, Burke, who's the daughter of Trek's founder and sister of the current president, said she watched as lean tactics helped improve the bicycle manufacturer's efficiency, lead time and product quality. "The big thing with lean is that if you have a lot of inventory in the system, and you might need a lot of time to change from making one model to another model, that could be difficult," she said. "Some companies just can't do that. (With lean) you can better change to meet customers' demands. If you produce too much you'd have to discount it, so (with lean) you're actually saving funds. It's really about being able to react quickly to more customer demand." Burke said she'd like to see more companies in the state put the philosophy to use. Her vision, she said, "would be that every manufacturer in every part of the state is lean." "My guess is that probably only 25 percent of manufacturers out there are using and have really implemented lean in Wisconsin," Burke said. "We have a lot of small manufacturers and really it's just as important in small manufacturers as it can be in a large one." Lean can apply to all types of organizations and industries, Burke said, and she practices what she preaches, using lean concepts in her department. "We have implemented it at the Department of Commerce and now have 10 trained facilitators in-house who have taken this on in addition to their regular job duties," she said. Burke said her department used the lean philosophy to streamline the process when employees start or leave their jobs. "It used to be that every division had its own method and there were always things getting missed, (for example) they didn't get their business cards on time or their telephone wasn't all set up or someone hadn't gone through their health-care forms," she said. Now, she explained, the department has devised a special checklist that employees use consistently. "Lots of time inefficiencies happen because you have to redo something," she said. "If it doesn't have to keep being revisited, you can improve inefficiencies by just having things be more of a straight path." Burke said she's also worked to revise business development loan and grant documents. "(We) cut the number of different documents in half and cut out 25 percent of the pages," she said. "The only language now in the contract is what is required by our administrative rules, and so it cuts out the negotiation time since we only have the basics. This will result in much shorter turnaround time, less staff time and our customers will cut down on the use of lawyers." But where's the innovation? Although a beloved strategy by many, lean has its detractors, said Professor Urban Wemmerlov, director of the Erdman Center for Manufacturing and Technology Management at the UW-Madison School of Business. "There has been criticism of the philosophy, especially in Europe," he said. "Note that 'waste elimination' points to a system with no idle movements, no idle time for the employees. This aspect, coupled with asking employees to take on additional tasks through cross-training, means that fewer employees can be used to produce higher output. The standardization of processes, done in order to reduce time and improve quality, can also mean that the discretion of the work force is reduced." "There also used to be resistance among employees when asked to be reorganized into teams, like into manufacturing cells," he continued. "Much of this criticism, I think, has subsided. This may, in part, be due to the increased knowledge and experience of lean manufacturing, and partly due to the awareness of global competition, and that if U.S. firms do not improve, jobs are at risk of being outsourced." Wemmerlov said that while he thinks lean does a good job of involving employees in the improvement process, the strategy might not be suited to every company. "Lean is often associated with streamlining and standardizing processes in order to do things at high volume but with low variety," he said. "There may be a risk that too much 'process management' may inhibit innovation and change. Firms need to be cognizant of the fact that most tools in the lean tool bag were designed for repetitive operations, and need to be matched to the situation at hand. A good example is pull systems, which in their standard form, don't suit low-volume, high-variety manufacturing," he said. Pull systems help manage resources in a production process by replacing only what has been consumed by customer demand to avoid stocking extra raw material and finished parts. WMEP's Klonsinski said the biggest challenge is to sustain and broaden lean participation in each company. "That's an area where WMEP focuses and we are getting more work," Klonsinski said. "Sustainability requires strong leadership commitment and culture change in a company. That is not an easy thing to do because time, resources and energy are limited within companies." Fristam, made-to-order For Fristam, though, the philosophy works. And they've watched as it's worked over and over again. During the 1990s, the company, which makes pumps for the dairy, beverage, bio-pharmaceutical and food industries, was seeing double-digit growth. But competition started catching up to them, Skora said. "Everyone knew what everyone was doing," he said. "We realized we needed to be more efficient to generate more profits." So, with help from a consultant and now with Skora as their main lean expert, the company has made the transition from a "made-to-stock" operation to a "make-to-order" company. At the beginning of the lean process, Fristam took every piece of equipment, every rack, and every tool out of the building, then put back only the equipment that was necessary to do the work. The more efficient work stations and procedures created a climate where, instead of making extra parts that would sit idly on a shelf, the company began to build what was ordered essentially from the ground up in a matter of days or hours. The process, he said, has helped them cut in half the amount they invested in inventory and has improved on-time deliveries from 45 percent to a whopping 90 percent. Skora said each "lean" change the company has made to their various manufacturing processes has been unique, and so the time in which they've witnessed positive impacts has varied. "Some, like point-of-use storage (having the tools for the job handily available) and changeover reduction (time spent readjusting a machine to make another part), were immediate," he said. "Others, like moving to make-to-order manufacturing, took months before we started to see a positive impact. The change to make-to-order caused us to go through several reiterations and tweakings before we could see good progress." In the end, Skora said, they've been pleased with their lean practices and procedures. And the company is poised to watch the fruit of their labor for some time to come. Next in lean: "Lean Six Sigma" Lean manufacturing and variations on the philosophy should continue to be popular for the foreseeable future, according to WMEP's Mike Klonsinski. One such variation is something that manufacturing professionals call "Lean Six Sigma." Six Sigma is a data-driven and problem-solving methodology popularized by companies such as Motorola and General Electric in the early 1990s. "Lean eliminates waste, corrects flow," said WMEP manufacturing specialist Wil Cox. "Six Sigma is really defect reduction, so putting them together is really powerful. Lean Six Sigma is the concept that's the best of both worlds, and they complement each other very well," Cox said. At the heart of Six Sigma is a process called DMAIC, or Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. When you find a problem, Cox said, you first define the scope of it. Then you measure it, look at the data, figure out a reasonable way to improve on the problem, and eventually, establish methods to control it for the future. "What you're trying to do is eliminate variability from processes." he said. Six Sigma organization managers will try to achieve a process that produces no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. That's a pretty tough criterion, Cox said. And that's why, for some companies, a combination of lean and Six Sigma might work best. Lean classes WMEP will host a series of lean manufacturing workshops this fall at the T.E.C. Center at Madison Area Technical College. For more information, call 608-243-4479. Classes can be taken individually or as part of the Lean Certificate Program offered by WMEP and MATC. Oct. 13: Value Stream Mapping Oct. 20: 5S/Visual Management Nov. 3: Quick Changeover/Kaizen Nov. 10: Total Productive Maintenance There are also a variety of semesterlong courses at UW-Madison that deal with different aspects of lean manufacturing. Among them: ISyE 510 Facilities Planning ISyE 641 Design and Analysis of Manufacturing Systems OTM 654 Production Planning and Control OTM 770 Introduction to Quality and Productivity Improvement OTM 875 Reorganizing the Factory: Competing through Cellular Manufacturing ISyE stands for Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering; OTM stands for Operations and Technology Management, School of Business. These for-credit courses may be open to industry participants if they meet prerequisites. Some are offered in the late afternoon and evening. Amanda Kramer is a freelance writer. kramer.news@gmail.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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