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Lean Manufacturing article in Woodshop News

4/8/15       
Tim Schultz

The current edition of Woodshed News Magazine has an excellent article about lean manufacturing. John English, the author, did an exceptional job. The writing is very cogent and comprehensible and reasonably comprehensive given the space he had to work with.

I've read every article I could find about this topic in the trade journals and elsewhere. For the most part they are confusing and tend to rely on too much kumbaya. I hope he follows up on some of the thoughts he developed in this article. I would like to see the woodweb develop a forum for this specific topic just like the trade journals have done consistently for almost 15 years.

4/8/15       #2: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Gary Balcom

Tim,

I'm all for a forum on this, but let's call it "Continuous Improvement" so we can all sit around the campfire together. Lean, TOC, TQM, etc are all just tools, not an end all be all. I started with TOC, but realized that Lean mingles nicely with TOC, as long as you have the right perspective. In fact, I have a job right now where I'm utilizing both methodologies.

4/8/15       #3: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Larry

I know I'm going to catch it over this set of observations, especially from Pat. However, after reading a lot, books, web, mags, & the woodweb, I still remain unconvinced that "Lean" is the solution to best performance. My shop is a long way from being a lean model. Instead of trying to look for waste, I've tried to develop a system for maximizing flow. That does include reducing waste but merely as a consequence of improving flow. Information flow is the first leg. Get what is needed to the correct place in the simplest way possible. Graphic representation has worked best in our shop. Production flow can get going after the required information has reached all necessary places. A big part of the trick here is in scheduling. Reducing the amount of time between material arrival and production start. Side note, buffers are always maintained. That is of course a Lean waste. But it recognizes that we are not in total control. We typically have several jobs running simultaneously. BUT once a job starts, it is run through all machining steps. It has to or it will block the conveyors. That doesn't mean that replacement parts have a long wait, it just means we have figured out how to make a system that can accommodate them w/o causing a breakdown in flow. Actually simple since we have worked on reducing setup time and for keeping track of part information VIA the labels. All parts travel on the conveyors making it simple to see flow problems and make capacity adjustments.

We don't work on lean. We do work on improving flow. Strikes me that lean just detracts from what we are trying to accomplish. I want the schedule to reflect our capabilities, I want information to be were it is needed, no side trips. I want production to keep moving, minimal buffers. If anything slows the flow it needs to be eliminated. The goal is making a buck! Margins are often slim. Meeting the customers requirements for all 3 of the somewhat mutually exclusive desires helps maintain the flow of work.

Profit jumps once fixed overhead costs have been met. Crank up that flow!

4/8/15       #4: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Pat Gilbert

Schultz do you have a link?

Larry

It seems to me the key was in reducing the setup times? IOW the conveyors would have been flowing like sludge if not for that?

Toyota has many types of vehicles flowing down the conveyor line, somehow they don't need the one piece flow.

I found this, he is saying that we may have misunderstood the word "one":

One Piece Flow is a fundamental element of becoming lean. To think of processing one unit at a time usually sends a shudder through the organisation which has batch manufacturing as its life blood. The word "one" does not necessarily have a literal meaning. It should be related to the customers' requirements and could be one unit of order. However, what it does mean is that the organisation should only process what the customer wants, in the quantity he wants and when he wants it.

Might be interesting

4/9/15       #5: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Tim Schultz

You want to think of One as a river of One, not unlike water traveling through a hose one molecule at a time.

In there Japan factory Toyota builds everything on the same line. They don't have a separate line for trucks and a separate line for sedans. They build everything on the same line according to the sequence that orders come in. A blue sedan might follow two green trucks which follow one yellow station wagon.

To be this nimble is awesome. We just have to get boxes built and can't somehow imagine doing it one box at a time.

The thing to examine is what is your justification for batch size. Cutting all the lumber for a walnut project makes sense when you are trying to optimize color & yield. In this operation the best batch size is ALL. After the material has been allocated, however, the appropriate batch size is much smaller for subsequent processing.

Gary made a comment about utilizing Lean & TOC. TOC is what you use to identify a constraint. Lean is the mechanism you use to "elevate" a constraint. In the real world low hanging fruit can rearrange the best allocation of resources.

That's why we have special stickers on the lunchroom table to park salt & pepper shakers. By standardizing the condiment locations we free up resources to bear on more constraining issues. We are working now on a dispenser that delivers the correct ratio of salt to pepper. Our goal is to minimize the motion necessary to wipe the table down between feedings.

4/9/15       #6: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Pat Gilbert

The link?

That is interesting regarding the flow, although I'm not sure I get it. Are you saying the river is the job the customer wants? IOW there is no conflict with what Larry is saying and Lean?

4/9/15       #7: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Tim Schultz

I read the analog version.

You could maybe find it here:http://www.woodshopnews.com/subscribe/preview-issue

4/9/15       #8: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Tim Schultz

That video was a good one Pat.

I think he did a good job of pointing out how you had to have a stable manufacturing process to make this work. He did not, however, comment on how one piece flow helps you develop a stable process.

The goal is to make each operation take the same amount of time so that people don't end up waiting for product or product doesn't start to puddle up on the shop floor because the subsequent work station isn't ready to receive it. One piece flow can help you to identify where the weak links actually are in much the same way a drought lowers a lake and shows you where the big rocks are that could potentially rip the hull on your boat.

Lots of work in process may be emotionally satisfying but it requires a lot of extra management both to understand where you are and to mop up when you misinterpret the information.

4/9/15       #9: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Mel

With all this kumbaya talk, I'm thinking it might be time to all hold hands and talk about our feelings :P

So when things get convoluted, sometimes simplifying is a good way to restart the computer before plunging back into the madness. Would it be possible to agree that the two big fundamental ideas could be resumed as such:

1-pay attention to what you are doing
2-Don't be a d!ck.

Maybe when things get hectic it's the lifeboat? Then when you are done reminding yourself of those big two, you put the pedometer back on the workers :)

4/9/15       #10: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Jim Member

I presume that I was doing lean before lean was cool. I just used the ideas of no wasted motions when designing work stations and work flow. I have dedicated stations for each process and the work moves from one to the next as the stations are nest to each other in a "U" design. I didn't call it lean rather how do I reduce non-productive work time.

Still talking with employees, working with them at their stations and doing the work to figure out more efficient ways of getting the work done. This is better than constantly tripping over yourself and things when trying to get the job done.

Are we at 100% efficiency? NO. but we are trying to increase efficiencies by looking at new processes, new ways of doing things, changing ways, searching new ideas and listening to people like the ones here who are much smarter than me.

4/9/15       #11: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Derrek

The great thing about the video is it shows the process of how to make a dcision on how to do something. I have seen this in my shop, people do something and you look at it and say what if we do it this way? You get the "nah, the way I do it is faster" response. Ok lets compare.the 2 ways. Oh wow boss your right your way saves 25%.
I watched the video, and the first thing I thought of is, if I'm folding a bunch of papers and stuffing envelopes like that, how could we automate it?

4/9/15       #12: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Pat Gilbert

Tim

Are you saying the river is the job the customer wants? IOW there is no conflict with what Larry is saying and Lean?

4/9/15       #13: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Larry

This applies to those of us that are primarily panel processors. Getting "Lean" is a little piece of improved FLOW. Within the realm of panel processing controlling flow should be relatively easy. There are few steps, or there should be. Information: Customer to computer to CAD/CAM (parametric right!) all kept on the server so everyone knows the file locations, Access to the information is via the controls on the panel processing machines and the shop terminals @ assembly & shipping. There is no setup time on CNC.
Material FLOW: common items are in designated locations (white mel, PBd etc.) For the record I haven't gotten the handling part up to snuff yet. It is coming this year. It is a small shop solution to the automated sorting systems. I will have 7 units of board on floor mounted roller conveyor. All accessible via vacuum lift on a gantry crane that can feed saw & routers. No manual lifting. (Saw can now stack cut w/o dragging and scratching.) Every sheet can be a different material with no loss of time. Labels are applied that have all required info for the rest of the processes. The graphic representation of the parts helps a lot for speed. Parts from the saw & routers are stacked by next operation onto the conveyors. By design there is limited space on the conveyors but there is also one section that can be used as a buffer if required. The visual feedback of having conveyors is worth as much as the savings in labor! It's worth noting to those opposed to conveyors that they can be laid out to allow about any path you could want through the use of transfer cars. We have 5 transfer cars in our system.

Most things are nested, (plain rectangles are sawn,) banded, bore & insert dowels or for KDs, hardware installed, glue injected, case clamped, doors, drawers, shelves installed, required information labels applied, wrapped, shipped. (Our bore & insert machine was special ordered with 3 drilling units so it can dowel, bore for Confirmats & face bore for KD's with no change over time. Functions are setup when the bar code on the label is read @ the machine.)

There is virtually no setup required at any station. What change over is necessary has been made as simple as possible. We use the same thickness of banding on almost everything, 2mm. Reduces inventory, keeps CAD files the same, eliminates bander setting changes and gives sales a talking point.

Improving FLOW (output) is all about having a system that reduces input. I really don't care where the salt shaker is! So called "one piece flow" is not something you need to worry about if you have your system properly set up. For us panel processors the technology is there and relatively cheap considering its capabilities. And, I am cheap! I want ROI! I provide what the customer is willing to pay for. I don't throw extras in for free. I make options available and show their cost, advantages & disadvantages. Customers choice. I'm an obnoxious old bastard that will turn down a job rather than do it wrong. There are enough hidden mistakes to be made w/o doing the ones you can see. Never stop learning, never stop improving.

4/9/15       #14: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Pat Gilbert

"So called "one piece flow" is not something you need to worry about if you have your system properly set up "

One piece flow or not?

4/9/15       #15: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Larry

Pat, Everything is in the damn computer, machines don't care what file is selected. All parts are essentially processed the same, material in, part out. For anyone new to this, get machines with enough capability that you don't have to make any machine setups. Enough boring bits, tool changes, bander stations, etc.

4/9/15       #16: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Tim Schultz

Sometimes we tend to get lost in the semantics. "One piece flow" in one context can actually mean just that and in another it can be merely allegorical.

"One piece flow" can describe an arrangement of machinery that allows an infeed for one station to constitute the out feed of another. In this arrangement parts flow from station to station without intervening storage or conveyance.

Shops with this arrangement are very flexible. The machine stations are configured where one person can staff them or you can put five people on the line as needed to keep up with customer demand.

There is no buffer in One Piece Flow. A great example of this is a Subway Sandwich store. The front end can staffed by one assembler and one cashier during periods of low demand. During lunch rush the production line has one person in charge of just tomatoes and one in charge of just secret sauce. The point is that this shop was set up to handle demand that fluctuated.

An interesting exercise would be to map your building to see what percentage is dedicated to fabrication and what percentage is merely aisleway. The only reason you need an aisleway is to navigate a cart. The only reason you need a cart is because the machines are too far apart or your batch size is big.

One piece flow shows you exactly which process is the slowest.

For one piece flow to work best all the processes need to take about the same amount of time. This is how lean weaves into TOC. By using one piece flow you can identify specifically which process is the hangup. There is nothing intuitive about it. If station 4 is starved for work your problem is at station 3.

"One piece flow" is also a concept. The subway sandwich store has some material already diced up for the lunch rush prior to the noon hour. In this case the batch size is more than just one sandwich at a time.

One piece flow also lowers management costs. If you know that face frames always get detail sanded before they are mounted to the box then if they are mounted on the box you know they are sanded. If you can do this sanding at any time or at any location you will need to expend more energy ascertaining whether or not it has been done and mopping up when it hasn't.

This is the part that makes production management so tedious. The production manager spends so much time doing clerk work he doesn't have time to give any thought to how the sanding takes place.
He is too busy assigning tasks and monitoring status.

A decent production manager is going to cost you somewhere between $250 & $300 a day. If he is only managing 4 - 5 guys then each guy has to kick up $50 to $60 to feed him..............per guy..............every day. Imagine what kind of crew you could hire if you could bump their wages $50 per day instead of using it to feed the clip board holder.

4/9/15       #17: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Pat Gilbert

So at the risk of starting an argument. But it is ok because it is not the P word.

Tim is saying that Larry does not use one piece flow.

Larry is saying that his product is quite varied, all panel processing, but the nature of the work is IMO highly varied. Tim's product IIRC is not varied, parametrically speaking.

I could see queues working if one person were processing. But with more people you are either going to have a queue or people waiting for parts.

Regarding Subway, that is a little misleading because the way they work when they are busy, as you know, is to use the bucket brigade. Remember that guy that posted said he used gigantic bucket brigades for assembling IIRC store fixtures, in large quantities. But this is a curve ball on one piece flow wouldn't you say?

One piece flow shows where the constraint is alright, but what Larry does also shows exactly the same thing?

I agree on the micro time keeping thing, it just is not worth it. However not keeping track of the time at all is crazy. OTOH if your work is highly repetitive then maybe it is not necessary? To which I would respond you may be getting too complacent?

OTOH giving production bonuses is quite useful, not the same as a xmas bonus.

There is a lot to be said for having a production foreman, clerk work is not his job. To me the basic dynamics of a business is one person to drive work in the door and one person to drive work out the door. The foreman is the later. If the same person does both that one person will naturally be conservative when selling and vice versa regarding production. IOW less than ideal. A big part of the foreman's job is scheduling. A big part of his job is knowing who is good at what. A big part of his job is assigning targets on what needs to get done by when. A big part of his job is making sure materials arrive. A big part of his job is QC, you could have one worker be the customer of the previous worker. But in reality you need to have an impartial observer know what quality is appropriate. I'm skeptical this person could be replaced with one piece flow.

I know you hate the phrase fix what bugs you but doesn't that put the person exterior to the process? Which is where good ideas come from. And it foments constant improvement.

4/10/15       #18: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Larry

Tim, I'll substitute "conveyor" for your "cart" and argue that for our rate of flow doing away with either can't happen. We process 40 to 60 sheets a day. Highly varied work, mixed materials. Some parts are 12' long some 1'. I'd love to see someone figure this scheme out so no handling was needed except off one machine and on to the next. Generally each machine has an operator but the cutting sequence to optimize sheets is such that not all the parts for one product can come out of every sheet. We do set the software to try and finish the parts for each case as close together as possible. It probably wastes a little material but better maintains the flow at the points sort & assembly. Some sorting occurs coming off each machine to optimize the input to the next. It requires judgement on the machine operators. If there are 8 parts per sheet, 50 sheets that's 400 parts to be banded, some on more than one edge. There might also be 30 or so parts to go to the contour bander, same operator. Nope, no "one piece flow" here. Contour parts may sit for 1/2 a day, so what? The foreman will make sure they get done in time to meet the rest of their assembly. But there is a mixed bag flow. Chaotic flow? Sort of. But whoever dreamed up the idea that you could manufacture store fixtures by handing off one machine onto the next doesn't have a clue. By the way Toyota doesn't even try to do that. What isn't seen when looking @ Toyota's line is all the parts made by their vendors, batched for shipping. I've toured the Kawasaki plant here that uses many, most of the famed Japanese manufacturing methods. No one piece flow there either.

There are optimum targets that will never be achieved but are valid targets.

4/10/15       #19: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Mel

Pat--is the P word politics or Pat?? ;) Totally kidding, I love your posts.

So I'm happy you folks mentionned Subway. I've been a viser-wearing loser making subs in Old Quebec, Jasper, and Nelson.

A few observations--the product is total poop (yes I wrote poop--got an email from the forum minds about my potty mouth). "Baked fresh" means exactly that--it comes in frozen tubes, and that's all you do--rise it and bake it.

The condiments are completely human modified scary/wrong: from the lettuce to the cucumber to the tomatoes--it all smells like nothing and tastes like water. The pickled items come in room temp bags, and they are mostly interchangeable, add hotness or oil. The sauces come in room temp bags too.

I'm not pooping on it--I get the industry, get the product, get the market. And it's a franchise deal--almost any dummy with a down payment can get in there and make profit. Still no complaints that that exists.

But do you want to be Subway?

4/10/15       #20: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
David Waldmann  Member

Website: vermonthardwoods.com

"I agree on the micro time keeping thing, it just is not worth it. However not keeping track of the time at all is crazy."

Maybe if you are working on projects that take hours, it makes sense to keep track of time. But if we kept track of time for each step of each job, sometimes we'd spend more time clocking in/out than working.

This is because we do a lot of batching, where there is absolutely no changeover time whatsoever. This is mostly a matter of mixing species - most of our mouldings are offered in 6 different species, and when we run a certain profile (this is make-to-stock), we may run as little as 30LF of a particular species. How long does it take to run 30LF through the gang rip? About 6 seconds. Even through the moulder or profile sander it's under a minute. The only way I could see it being even close to feasible would be to have a bar code scanner at every work station. And even then I can see a lot of hiccups.

We "keep track of time" by comparing our actual labor related costs with what we say those costs are - a variance - and dig in when we see negative trends or anomalies.

As I believe I mentioned in another thread, we didn't just start out by estimating time and decide we didn't need to track it. We tracked time off and on to various degrees for 25 years. The final step was doing some intensive stopwatch studies in combination with analyzing data from several years, i.e. "This is what our study shows it should take to do this set of steps on this particular job - ok, how long did it actually take?".

I am definitely not complacent about time. It's our second largest cost, and not too far behind material.

4/10/15       #21: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Gary Balcom

Tim,

I'm not buying the whole one piece flow concept entirely. For instance, I have a big project in house right now that shows the flaws in it. I've created an awesome workcell. It starts with parts coming off the nest outfeed table, an operator picks up the part, runs the top edge through a small edgebander 2' off of the outfeed table, then another operator catches it, and runs it through a table saw with powerfeed splitting it into two parts. The parts are a finished width of 4", too small for most banders to band the top edge reliably. Then these parts stack on our conveyor line for our large bander to band 2 long edges.

With 3 people in that cell, I can produce almost 2,000 parts in a day. Our big bander is the constraint on this project and simply can't keep up. If I included our big bander in the "one piece flow" concept, I would waste time of everyone behind it. As of right now, I can push the cell with 3 people, and have bander work for 2 days. Then those people go to other areas of the shop, and 1 person can run the router doing another task.

as an aside, I don't care where the salt and pepper shakers are either...

4/10/15       #22: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Pat Gilbert

I think the primary problem with both Gary and Larry's operation is that they don't have the salt & pepper shaker locations. labeled.

OTOH I do like the bottom up idea that lean presents. How do all three of you fellers utilize the bottom up aspect of Lean? Or much to Mel's chagrin do you ignore all employee ideas?

4/10/15       #23: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Larry

In spite of the fact that we have monthly employee meetings where all are asked for input on various topics, There aren't many inputs. Things normally covered: status of upcoming work, any issues with recent shipments, compliments from customers, ideas for improvements are all discussed by 3 people involved in some aspect of management. If there are any shop inputs, it is almost always from the same two people. Any ideas presented at the last meeting are replied to. If the idea is being pursued, what is happening. If the idea didn't seem to work more information about how it could be implemented is asked for. We've tried different ways of getting more response but not very successfully.

4/11/15       #24: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Mel

Larry--try asking individuals seperately for questions that are up their alley. Don't expect an immediate answer all the time--let the question settle in the noggin and get processed for a bit.

Meetings are intimidating to most of us Orcs of Mordor.

4/11/15       #25: Lean Manufacturing article in Woods ...
Gary Balcom

Pat,

The first Continuous Improvement strategy I studied was Total Quality Management, then Theory of Constraints, then Lean. This has given me a few different "lenses" to look through to consider situations and events. All of them preach Top Down implementation, but TQM and Lean also really support getting input and ideas from the shop floor. So, no ivory tower syndrome here, I'm on the shop floor at least a dozen times a day.

I'm big on short effective meetings. I have a meeting every Tuesday after the shops morning break, where I've been going over lean practices and trying to get people to see the 8 wastes (fastcap style). These meetings cover a lot of ground pretty quickly, 1/2 hour max. I strongly encourage input from the group. Most of the time I get some.

One of my favorite meetings so far on this was actually taking 50 or so washers and splitting the guys into two groups, one on each side of the table. One side did "one piece flow", the other side batched in sets of 7. As I counted out the moves, after 15 or so, I stopped and said there was a defect at a station, and it wasn't caught for two stations. Then we counted up the bad parts on the batch side. It was really cool to watch the guys get it.

When I said I didn't care where the salt and pepper shakers are, that's true. But I DO CARE where the tools are, and everything is that is needed at a certain station. We're far from perfect at this, but we're actively trying.

My shop supervisor was out all this week, and I was monitoring the shop floor myself. Every single morning I would gather up the employees, find out who was working on what, when they expected to be done, and if they were having any challenges. This only took 5 min every morning. We had a very productive week, so I think it payed off.

Another thing we try to do every morning is 3S the shop. Sweep, Sort and Standardize for 30 min every morning. I've also given the opportunity to the employees to "fix what bugs them", or prevents a skilled employee from doing a good job. In the last year, we've reduced our batch size considerably, and work really pumps through the shop.

Like I said before, I don't think Lean and TOC are mutually exclusive.


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