Project Sweden - Teaching Lean - A Diary

Yes,

Originally, I was going to have the welding manager give the presentation (The formal presentation is in Swedish). After some serious thought, I decided to do it myself. I find that I am able to command a little more respect during the presentation and that my presentation animation seems to help. I have also spoken with him to provide me with any nay-saying if it occurs, and when it occurs as this crowd is a little more tough. This way I will be able to address any concerns immediately.

Anyways, as this is a running diary... no doubt, this may get a little boring repeating the same program to the same company (only a different crowd), but I may get some new unexptected results. So, we will continue, atleast for another two weeks and see what happens.
This facility is very lean in regards to reporting structure so I am running out of resources for additional programs. (TPM, Kanban, etc). Over the next two visits I will attempt to get them to standardize their Std Wk / Kaizen progam over the next year or so. They certainly have enough cells to keep them busy until then.
(How lean is their reporting structure? 1 QA Mgr, no staff, 4 mfg group leaders, 2 mfg mgrs, 2 planners, 2 engineers, 2 maint staff, Plant Mgr, and a couple odd staffing positions).

As one frog said to the other frog, "time sure is fun when your having flies."

Day 1 went well.

The team consisted of ; Mfg Mgr, 2 Group leaders, 2 engineering.

The event sheet was kept simple describing the team, current situation, goals, scope, and required resources.

On day 1 we spent 5 hours in a class presentation covering the specific tools and concepts required to do a well planned Kaizen. This covered teamwork, quality tools, and brainstorming, kaizen priority, kaizen tools, etc. This was cut a little short because of other pending meetings. The remainder of this lecture will be taught Tuesday.

There was good participation and interaction with this team. (Despite it all being in Swedish). Scheduling causes the major cause of excess work. Whether the chassis is here or not, production still builds. I strongly recommended that they do not build if the chassis is not here, to move the vehicle back one day in the schedule and move the next one up (assuming it was here). They thought this was an excellent idea.

Day 2 went well.

We completed the rest of the orientation today and completed the standardized work chart on the chassis mounting portion. We will not be able to do the std wk on the assembly portion until Friday, as the current demand is currently 80% Kits, 20% Chassis. Tomorrow we will attempt to do the actual time studies. (normally this is 50/50)
A one minor problem which is in the flow path. Currently assembly runs their kits and cassis through the same path, as a result, the kit must sit or wait until the chassis is finish for run it through another path. It is possible to establish a path for chassis and another path for Kits; however, assembly is a little reluctant to do so at this time.

Day 3 went well.
Had a minor problem with acceptance from the floor in performing time studies, (Why are blue collar people doing time studies on other blue collar workers?), as well as some of the members upset because not everyone was available to help with the time studies. We held two separate meetings. One meeting was held with the team to agree as to who is supposed to do what, and the other to discuss how we would handle the meeting for the floor.
Chassis mounting portion of the time study was completed and updated the 5’S schedule, Training schedule, and Kaizen schedule as well as open items on the Kaizen tracking sheet.
Thursday ---- Today, many meetings which inturrepted the flow of our program. (Out side-VIP's). Countermeasure is to determine who is visiting when, and will this effect training? If this is so, we will pre-plan the training around the visits so that we can maintain our schedule.

Thursday - had to cancel due to VIP visit.

Friday went as expected. Finished the time study on the mounting portion, and to complete the time study on the assy portion on monday. Brainstormed for improvement, process flow, and process procedure.

Guess I should have wrapped this up months ago . .. sorry. . .. been away.

For what ever its worth, we finely ended up in tailgate assembly on the welding side with numerous gains from 20 to 40%, but the real challange was in final assembly . . . which . . by the way . . . never did fully buy in to lean . . even with extensive training . . . Well, as push comes to shove . . . back at the end of December . . . I gave a very, strong argument to begin one-piece flow in assy . . when push come to shove . . . it was decided to wait . . . so, I did the next best thing . . . . . I left. (They sent another lean guy who has yet to get them into 1 piece flow).

On the happy side, I am still with the company, but in the U.S. In the last 3 months my project has taken us up 37%, (about $5MM net). And in this project, the management staff is saying yes to everything.

so, as they say . . . . a silver lining in every cloud.

as

asutherland said:

Guess I should have wrapped this up months ago . .. sorry. . .. been away.

For what ever its worth, we finely ended up in tailgate assembly on the welding side with numerous gains from 20 to 40%, but the real challange was in final assembly . . . which . . by the way . . . never did fully buy in to lean . . even with extensive training . . . Well, as push comes to shove . . . back at the end of December . . . I gave a very, strong argument to begin one-piece flow in assy . . when push come to shove . . . it was decided to wait . . . so, I did the next best thing . . . . . I left. (They sent another lean guy who has yet to get them into 1 piece flow).

On the happy side, I am still with the company, but in the U.S. In the last 3 months my project has taken us up 37%, (about $5MM net). And in this project, the management staff is saying yes to everything.

so, as they say . . . . a silver lining in every cloud.

as

Click to expand...

...To quote W.C.Fields, (a well respected "Quality Commentator" in the USA many years ago - for those Covers who are not familiar with US history),

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again...Then quit. There's no point in being a d__n fool about it...).

Apparently you have proven that axiom...

asutherland said:

Guess I should have wrapped this up months ago . .. sorry. . .. been away.

Click to expand...

No worries, but it's good to hear from you again.

asutherland said:

so, as they say . . . . a silver lining in every cloud.

Click to expand...

Indeed

/Claes

I would concentrate on 5 S first since it is usually considered the corner stone of Lean.

For what ever its worth. I typically focus on 5S first. In this of my lastest assignment (here in the US), I began with std.work charts and combo charts and went immediately into 1-piece flow. ( I needed to get an immediate increase in product volume).

In regards to 5S, I have found that many places miss the main focus. . . . . Work place organization . . . a place for everything and everything in its place. The purpose is to suport material flow, work flow, and product flow. What typically transends is a p-poor attempt to sweep and mop floors which has no value except to clean surface areas.
as

[/I]

asutherland said:

On Day 3 we completed the standardized work chart and went to the line to capture the time. Everything went perfect. The line began and continued welding in their normal random order. The team could not tell when to start the timing and when to stop. After 1.5 hours, the team decided it was time to stop because they were getting nowhere and we regrouped to explain what happened.

We discovered that nobody knew what anyone was supposed to do or when. The team was a little troubled because they just had a product change and many things on the list now had to be redone and no one knew how we were going to finish.

We wrote our new target “without severely effecting productivity, how will we capture the data we need, regardless of model type?”

We came up with 5 methods.


On Day 4 the vote was 4 of 1 item and 2 of another. The team discussed these items by themselves and we made a final decision.

It was my opinion that we did the wrong item and that the other two members buckled under pressure. I then gave a supporting argument that the other team members chose the option that was more beneficial and told them why. We took another vote and it was a unanimous agreement to change. I then talked to the team and said if you make a decision, do not bend to peer pressure.

I then gave them another convincing argument about changing to option 3 and said that their decision was wrong and why. It was voted on again and everyone stuck to their previous decision.

We then assembled a plan to implement the capture of data required and evaluated it for problems, and finalized the plan.

Click to expand...

Would it be possible for me to get a template (excel would be great) for a Standard Work Combination Chart? It looks like you've been doing a great deal with standard work and I'm just getting started with this at my work place. Management wants to see the standard work in a chart form (I've had it shown similar to a time line for each work task.). Thanks in advance. Dave @ email address removed. Please click on their name above and send a message to them via this site's tools. Thanks!

I just read this thread and it appears that you managed to convey a message by death By PPT. I commend you for the efforts.
I try to leave breath and Eat 5 S at home at work and in my car. It is all about getting other people involved and allow them to see the benefits. If the change is slow and machines and conditions to work does not approve, it can be difficult to Sustain the efforts. to through in PM and Line clearance, and calculate waste and downtime with out any Tool more than records on paper is not Kaisen but hard work.

Well done and keep at it.