Lean Manufacturing in AC vents manufacturing - Part 1
As promised in lean for our organization contest, I am publishing one of the good quality articles sent by one of our readers in a series of two articles. You will be able to incorporate these learning in your lean manufacturing efforts. Thanks for Satish the author of this article.
Lean Implementation:
Brief Introduction: Hi , I am Satish N Ladwa from India, I am into supplier performance engineering in an Automotive company which is into the manufacturing of Instrument panel Assemblies(4 wheeler dash board) for OEM’s , department name itself indicates my main role , i.e. to improve the suppliers performance in terms of Quality , Cost & delivery.
Problem Definition:
Refer the below snap shot of the product, this is the Air vent sub- assembly (Air Vents are the outlet for the AC in the car) used in the Instrument Panel Assembly. Air Vent parts are plastic injection molded & assembled at supplier end. This assembly contains 21 individual parts.
Requirement of this assembly is 400 nos / day; however in the existing established assembly line only 305 to 310 parts can be assembled in the normal 8 hour working shift. Many a times this has resulted in stoppage of customer line.
The Original Picture sent by the author was changed to any Copyright Issues
Waste Categories:
- 2.2 hrs of over time for 15 people + 1 Supervisor.
- 15 people needed to run the assembly line.
- Inventory observed at intermediate stages.
- Through put time more.
- Unable to meet customer requirements.
Causes: To understand the cause for the delays in supplies 2 days where spent on assembly line to study all operation and material flow. Considering the detail observation the existing situation is plotted (refer below layout) along with records of cycle time, resource requirements, space requirement etc.
PROBLEMATIC SITUATION OF AIR VENT ASSEMBLY LINEFollowing are the Cycle Time Details
Observations are:
- First piece from comes out only after 361 sec from the start of assembly line.
- Thereafter time required 85sec / part.
- After every 100 nos operator found to leave there place to re-fill there bins with parts to continue with assembly, hence line stops for 10 mins
- After every ~2 hrs.
- Manpower used 15 nos.
- Overtime paid for ~2.2 hrs.
- Unnecessary stages are added hence consuming more time / manpower and space.
- Stages / Cycle time is not balanced.
- Inventory observed in-between A-B / E-F / J-K operations.
- Supervisor is always under pressure to meet customer requirements.
- In the existing situation only 307 parts can be produced against the requirement of 400 / day.
- Existing space utilized is 11.5 x 3.3 meters.
4 comments:
Hi Satish,
This might be a bit premature for me to comment , I believe, since you are yet to come out with Part 2 of your approach to address the problem. I would like to share some of my findings.
At a rate of 400 pcs per 8 hr shift you end up with a takt time of 72 secs per finished vent assly but where as presently you are clocking somewhere @ 85 secs.
I see by the cycle time details that oprn "M" itself is having 85 secs as operation time. So this is the bottleneck resource.
You can have a look at this aspect & prune accordingly.
Best regards
Sanjeev G Joshi
This statistic very help me. I think it's very good job :)
Hello Satish,
The takt time is 72 sec.
Based on the information, this is a manual operation with 15 operators, Am I right?
If it is the case then balance the work load on each operation i.e., give more work to an operator who is working less than 72 sec and reduce the worklaod from operator who is working more than 72 sec.
By doing that you will be able to meet the customer demand as well as able to run the job with 5 operators, 1 inspector due to current change in a process and a supervisor (total 7 employees at the beginning of the change then later on with 6 employees with supervsior).
Hope this will help you.
Bhavesh Gandhi
hello satish,
1) is your data consistent, when you do the process mapping how many times did you repeat the data.
2)how many operators refill the bins
3) is that taking avg 10mins
4)how can we avoid having d/time of every 2 hrs.
thanks
shan
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