Detailed Research of the Company Acme Machining - Essay Example

?Introduction The project includes the detailed investigation of the company d “Acme Machining”, with the vehicle disc brake as the focal point of the study. Off side (RH) and near side (LH) disc brakes are the two types of disc brakes. The main buyer from this company is Chris Car Custom Vehicle Assemble Plant. The present need for the plant is 800 pieces per month, 400 for the left and 400 for the right. Due to increased demand for this product in the market, ChrisCar is aiming to 1600 pieces per month target in the near future. The main purpose of this report is to recommend a plan for the company to meet the requirements of ChrisCar, carry out a detailed study about the waste products and optimize the work operations. Current process The present procedure is one with an 8 hour shift for 20 days in a month, with both Fridays and Saturdays observed as off-days. The details of the 11 current operations being run can be seen in figure 1. Initially the present VSM or Value Stream Mapping has been developed. VSM is basically is a method to understand the dense relationship between each of the operations. It depicts time elapsed, non-conformance number, inventory and the flow of information between operations. The following advantages of VMS have been elaborated by Tapping, et al. (2002): a) Envision all of the flow of information and material used. b) Envision the relationship between operations and production control. c) Point out the waste sources in the system. d) Identify bottleneck operations. Afterwards statistical charts like bar chart, pie charts and waterfall charts are constructed. For this purpose, all the activities in the operation that that value or non-value added, must be highlighted. Value added activity is one which creates value, as customers perceive it. On the other hand, non-value activities are those, for which, the customer will not be liable to pay for. For this reason all non-value activities should be removed from the process immediately. In this scenario, cycle time is a value added activity whereas the set-up time and waiting time are tagged as non-valuable activities. Reason behind future state The immediate target of the future plan is to nullify all non-valuable activities and wastes. Waste is described as the process that does not help in cost reduction and also as a process that doesn’t add to the product value. In total, waste can be categorized in seven parts: 1. Waiting 2. Needless inventory 3. Flaws 4. Transportation 5. Overproduction 6. Incorrect processing 7. Needless motion Nevertheless, another waste which is also considered in this list as the eight waste is over-employment, which means employees, whose services are not fully utilized. This disease can only be curbed by the input of the employees in the company with innovations and better working ideas. Three major motives are involved in the consideration of lean manufacturing in the very first place. First and foremost is the expanding of the market at a global stage. Then comes, the higher demands of the customer in relation to quality and a better cost. Lastly, the old school methods are no longer accepted, for e.g. once a month delivery of the products to the customer. Lean manufacturing is an outstanding approach to achieve better operations, quality and cost wise. It is a sluggish process but contributes heavily to lessening of wastes. Additionally, it is more prone to increasing the quality of the process. The major motives behind VMS are listed and elaborated as follows: 1. TAKT time and bottleneck station TAKT is the essential element that has to be considered in lean manufacturing to meet the requirements of the customer. According to Carreiera (2005), TAKT is defined as “the frequency with which your customer consumes a unit of product”. In simple words, it can be established about TAKT time that, it is the time available for producing a product which is parallel to the needs of the customer. TAKT time can be calculated by the following formula: If the time of the process is less than the TAKT time, it will cause a waste known as overproduction. However, if process time is more than TAKT time than it results in bottleneck, due to which the demand may not be met in considerate time. As in the company understudy, Acme Machining Co., which has, as told before, 5 days in a week as working days, will have 480 minutes as the maximum time. However, a 1 hour 20 minutes break is needed in every shift. Additionally, 10 more minutes are considered to be lacking from the overall time due to various needs of the workers, reducing the maximum time to 390 minutes. Maximum time 480 minutes Lunch breaks 60 minutes Two breaks 20 minutes Shift changeover and personal needs 10 minutes Available time 390 minutes Figure 11: Available time in each shift for the Acme Machining Co. The available time is 18.75% lower than the maximum time which is in an acceptable range for most industry standards. The monthly need for the customer is 16600 pieces, making it a breakdown of 400 pieces per week. The TAKT time for this situation is shown below: As the time is 13.65 minutes, it is very important to lessen the operation cycle time which are more than 13.65 minutes. Figure 12: Cycle time of each operations. The TAKT time of 13.65 is shown in green line As it can be seen from the chart above(figure 12), the mask and grind 2 operation time is more than 13.65 minutes. Therefore, these are the bttlenecks. In this scenario, the upstrream process works at a lesser rate than the bottlneck. The overall operations would be halted at the bottleneck station. Additionally, the cycle time which is close to the TAKT time may cause botlleneck in the future, if TAKT time is reduced. 2. Merging process As Grind 2 is thought to be a bottleneck station, it will be joined with grind 1. Therefore, reduction is made in the waste and non-value added time. The present waiting time for grind 2 is 112.5 hours which when compared to others is almost the maximum time available. This is a very noticeable betterment in the waiting time. Also, there is 0 time for transportation, which would invariably lead to the reduction of manufacturing lead time. The grinding process, now, has a new cycle time of 25 minutes per piece. However, there are two grinding machines at our disposal making the cycle time half to about 12.5 minutes. This very same technique is applied on turn 1 and 2, although both of these processes are not of bottleneck. Due to less cycle time, these processes may end up being overproduction. The latest turning process will be operated on the Dial A speed, precision lathe due to the fact that another machine which is Weiler- Precision Lathe, is already being used for turn 3 process. This alone means that turn 3 cannot be combined with turn 1 and 2 because of the sequence of the operations. In this process, the grinding has to be completed earlier than turn 3. The present cycle time will be 10 minutes for turning process 1 and 2. The mask process is also a bottleneck station. For reducing the time for this cycle, paint operation s joined with this, masking has to be done before the start of painting, as painting is the final process before packing and transportation to the customer. Since the painting is an automatic process, the painting operator is present after the loading of the batch on the painting machine. Therefore, the same operator can help the masking operator. Hence the total time at this station is brought down to 15 minutes per piece. 3. Remove defects Defects are waste that totally nullified as they contribute directly in increasing the cost, in the future. 0% non-value activities are present in the operations, resulting in lower manufacturing cost. Defect cost includes cost of re-inspection, re-manufacturing, re-scheduling and about cost. These all often are a big chunk of waste cost. Inspection process has been discarded form the future plan map. This is done due to their high addition to non-value activities. The customer does not need inspection at every stage; rather this is a company requirement to ensure the quality of the product. However, in this scenario as the defect percentage is zero, the laborious inspection procedures can be neglected. The positives that come out of neglecting the inspection is the reduction of manufacturing lead time and the distance between different processes. By doing this; a 16 minute cycle time, 12 minute setup time and 27.9 minute per piece can be saved. Moreover, the distance between the inspection 1 and masking is the greatest and by ignoring inspection, this time and distance is also saved as no transportation is required between these two processes. 4. Trim down Reduce distance The new facility plan (map) is developed in such a way, as to reduce the distance and travelling between processes. This results in the lower transportation cost and undue movement around the factory. The basic idea is to keep closer the Weiler turning machine for turn 3 and mask operation station so backtracking is avoided. Further details of the layout are discussed in the topic “Facility change”. 5. Establish a short term forecasting method In the new plan, a forecasting system is used. Forecast is made for 30 days to determine the needed production capacity and capability for meeting the customer needs. This is known as a short term forecast which is accurate than many other forecasting like a 60 or 90 day forecast. This is due to the fact, that in such a short period, the forecasting is based on actual facts and figures, rather than future assumptions and predictions. This information is then used to tweak the number operators and re-distribute the work load in consideration with the change in demand over a monthly period. 6. Introduction to “Kanban” and Just-In-Time systems Kanban in a primitive method applied in the future to control the in-process production. The process which is linked with Kanban is only based on the input by the customer, according to his demands and supply chain in the market. The advantages of this method are the improvement in productions, reduction of wastes, reduction in extra costs and betterment of adaptability in the demand. According to the Kanban process, the numbers of disc brakes produced in a month are dependant upon the number of brakes needed rather than the forecast made at the start of the month. The order placed by the customer is in multiples of 4 but there are 5 tray pallets available to the facility therefore making it 20-forging plates in one pallet. It is now up to the “Kanban size” meaning that either 20 RH or 20 LH brakes can be prepared and shipped to the customer. After the transportation of the products, the trays are returned to the packaging which actually means that the customer uses 20 brakes and hence the process produces 20 more brakes. For this sole reason “Kaban” process is also known as “pull” type production scheme. The future batch size will be now composed of 20 brakes. The main thought of kanban is directly linked with JIT delivery. JIT, abbreviation for Just-In-Time, delivery is based on the idea of ‘only produce what is needed, by using the shortest lead time”. The materials needed for the process reach the station just before they are needed and not days or weeks before they are needed. Therefore waste like overproduction will be killed in this scheme. This scheme consists of three major portions: TAKT time, continuous flow processing and pull system. Due to the JIT being a future system, the materials delivered to British Forging Ltd. are delivered on a daily basis. This lessens the inventory amount in the system; therefore the storage cost is reduced. Additionally, it can be said that the, goods at present have to wait 30 days before being operated upon. Therefore after introducing JIT, the wasting time is shorted by a 24 hour limit, showing a hefty 96.67 % decrease overall. Facilitate change For the future state value stream, two main changes are brought in the system: employee and layout change Layout change Group technology is the basic ingredient of the new layout, which essentially means that similar machines and processes are grouped together. Figure 25: Current facility layout It can easily be deduced that the present layout has many disadvantages. First and foremost, the position of the reception does not associate with the first operator position, which is the drilling operator. This causes large over head due to unnecessary transportation. The location of the reception should be very near to the entrance. Then, backtracking can be noticed from grind 2 to turning 2 and 3 machine. This creates a lag between operations, hence should be uprooted form the process. The final drawback is the distance from inspection 1 to masking station, 18 meters to be exact. The covering of this distance is considered to be a non-value activity, increasing overhead cost. Figure 26: Future facility layout The future plan, as seen in the figure above, is a better one than the current one. The reception, as proposed, has been moved near to the drilling station. The new layout is one that follows the cellular scheme. The important factors in this layout are: 1. Products have smaller difference 2. Similar routes are followed by the products. 3. Equipments are organized according to the product family Furthermore, backtracking has been completely eradicated. Also, less space is required by the new layout as all the machines are placed in an organised manner. Employee change According to Tozawa & Bodek (2001) “creating an atmosphere of continuous improvement by changing your view, changing your method, and your way of thinking to make something better or for something to become better”. This is an essential improvement in the process which has been established to Kaizen Blitz. It is a method which improvises and enhances the performance of the teams, which in turn are better equipped to tackle any on-site issues. Kaizen may be utilized as a tool to improvise employee activities for betterment. This system is established on the method of adopting small change for less periods of time. This, in turn, is always a boost for performance and quality of the product, also reducing the waste processes. The basic ingredient is the providence of motivation to the employees for a better response to change. The employees are provided with ample chances to make their ideas a reality and in turn bring improvements to the whole system, which they are an essential part of. Similarly, the employees are encouraged to bring innovation to the table, which in turn will increase their confidence, if the idea is applied fruitfully. Suggestions 5S and SMED are the two general proposals to improve the overall company performance. 5S is a 5 step process that encourages constant improvement in the efficiency of the employees. This scheme helps to eliminate waste and gain more profits in the fiscal year. The 5 steps that comprise the 5S are as follows: 1. Sort: deals with eradicating unnecessary goods. Due to this free space is available on the floor. 2. Ser in order: is the way in which every item is located in its specific place, hence increasing the accessibility. In this part, the items used most frequently are placed in most accessible areas. 3. Shine: essentially involves the cleaning of the area of work and sorted out. 4. Standardise: to make a bench mark for employees to follow. 5. Sustain: is an everyday exercise to retain actions taken in steps 1-4. Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) SMED is a method aimed at reducing the changeover time approach aims to reduce changeover time. Three steps of SMED are described by Dolcemascolo (2006): 1. Different internal and external setup: External setup is those processes that are performed outside the machine whereas those done inside the machine are internal setups. 2. Switch the internal setup into external setup 3. Rationalize all characteristics of the setup procedure: this step is essentially to consider the internal setup procedure and targets the betterment of the organizational effectiveness. Read More