Introduction and Define

Introduction

My name is Hugh O Donoghue, and I am a part time student at IT Sligo, currently doing the Certificate in Lean Sigma Quality(Green Belt).

My full time position is as Production Engineer with a medical devices company. Currently I am working on improving various production lines, one of which is the basis for this project.

The main focus of this project is to balance the line, so as to meet customer requirements during the normal working hours, improve the flow of the product through the process, reduce in-process WIP, reduce batch sizes and standardise the work.

During the course of my investigation, I will be getting an understanding of what happens at each stage of the process, the breakdown of the work content of each step of the process, and from here analysis the data and doing calculations such as cycle time and takt time, identifying areas of improvement and implementing solutions.

The process contains 9 steps, each of which contains areas of potential improvement. These may include, but may not be limited to: SMED, operator variation reduction through standardised work, kanbans, Pareto, Poke Yoke, SIPOC.

Define

The initial meeting with the Operations Manager began with the knowledge that the product does not flow through the process.  Further to this, production on this line has increased due to customer demand. As a result, production is not meeting customer demand within normal working hours, resulting, resulting in overtime being required.

From here, we agreed to collect data over a number of weeks so as to investigate why the product does not flow smoothly, and to have some evidence available when a meeting that included more stakeholders in the process was organised.

Currently, of the nine stages in the process, two stages are processed in large batches, as they are long processes.  As a result, some of the other processes downstream of them are also process in large batch sizes. At the conclusion of this project, the goal is that the line will be balanced, so that the product flows in small batch sizes where possible.

Stakeholders

The Operations Manager, Production Engineer, Value Stream Leader, Quality Engineer, Line Engineer, Line Technician, Health and Safety Coordinator, Financial Controller and production operators all have an interest in the reorganisation of the line. Production operators from the various shifts are involved to give a hands on perspective of the work, and to highlight any issues that are applicable to their work time.

Fig 1

In the beginning, there was no scheduled meetings with stakeholders, just informal conversations to gather information and keep the stakeholders up to date.
As the project progresses, a more formal meeting schedule will be put in place.

Value Stream Map

Gathering of initial data produced the process map below. It highlights areas that require further investigation, the bottleneck processes that are stage 7 & 3, idenifies whether processes are manual or automatic. Operator 1 is responsible for steps 1-4, operator 2 is responsible for 5 & 7, while operator 3 is repsonsible for operations 8 & 9.

Fig 2

Project charter

Developing a project charter for a project is a great idea, as it gives a focus to the project, its outlines why the project is required, what the goals of the project are, it gives all relevant data on one page, it gives a timeline. It gives ownership and responsibility to team members.

For me, developing this charter was a great way to get an introduction to this process, to get to know the stakeholders and understand why it was required by the company.

VOC

VOC analysis was carried out when developing the project charter. Lots of information was gathered as to why the process was underperforming, and this provided a roadmap of the areas to focus on later in the project. Much of this deeper information was unknown to some of the stakeholders, due to lack of interaction with the operators.
It was an important part of the project, to get all the relevant information to the stakeholders. It also highlighted tht communication was an area that needed improvement.

Project schedule

In the beginning, there was no fixed schedule, the main goal was just to start collecting data about the performance of the process. From here, the schedule will be influenced by customer orders, overall business performance, stakeholder availability, etc

The DMAIC process will be run in parallel at different times, as measuring will take place over the duration of the project, initially to get baseline data, then tracking the output after changes are made, then ongoing monitoring to make sure the new standards are still being followed.

Fig 3

Regression back to the old state after a while is one of the big problems associated with any change project.

Key Factors

Managing the change process. Resistance to change is very normal. People are used to their work routine. However, these routines need to change as part of the continuous improvement process.

Communication. All stakeholders need to be kept informed of what is happening during the project, why changes need to be made, what data has been gathered,what changes will be made. Communication will be by email, noticeboard, meetings, informal conversation.

Upskilling and training. Getting to a new improved status requires training, as a new standard work has to become the new normal.