The Benefits of SMED

In manufacturing, one of the manager's never ending duties is to find ways to continually optimize and streamline the facility's operations. Even little incremental changes can have a huge effect in improving worker efficiency and output flow. Every level of the assembly line must be analyzed for weaknesses and problems so that the issues can be properly addressed. Anything that can cause a slowdown or pause during any phase of production is an enemy of any factory setting. One common source of work stoppage is the routine shift and employees changes. Aside from creating a backlog that can be very difficult to recover from, such occurrences also cost the company precious time and money. Lost profits can easily amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars through accumulated interruptions. One excellent way administrators can deal with this matter is with the introduction of Quick Changeover Simulations into their Human Resources Department's employee curriculum. Also called SMED games, these simulations are classroom activities that can be practiced during regularly scheduled HR appointments, or dedicated company-wide team building excursions. A SMED offers many advantages to any firm running an assembly line in the manufacturing industry. Foremost among its many gifts is its ability to instill in employees the proper techniques that can reduce shift change downtime to its very minimum. Through constant practice and repetition, workers get to understand firsthand the actual reason why certain protocols are in place instead of just blindly following their boss's instructions. This is useful when you want to institute stricter measures, but don't want it to negatively affect workforce morale. Running a SMED will also provide employees a safe venue to fail and mess-up operational processes without having it threaten the wellbeing of neither the company nor the workers themselves. In this way, people can learn how to avoid repeating their mistakes without hurting anyone. Finally, a SMED is also an effective team building tool. It allows the workers to build relationships and a sense of camaraderie with each other. This leads to increased employee morale which statistics show has a direct effect on a person's work rate, efficiency and production output. Never forget that happy companies are also profitable companies.
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Light Tables vs Inspection

Anyone who performs quality control in a laboratory or industrial environment knows the importance of adequate lighting. Without the proper level of illumination, it is nearly impossible to perform quality control to expected standards. This could result in serious legal penalties, fines, and even a shutdown of the facility. Equipping heavy, medium, and light duty tables with illuminated table tops ensures that this will not happen. A standard industrial table outfitted with lighting is offered with optional casters that make the workbench a mobile unit. Hydraulic lift units adjust the height of the table to accommodate seated or standing users while a hydraulic tilt unit moves the work surface to an ergonomically convertible angle. A deluxe version of this table features additional light panels that provide adequate illumination for inspection of the smallest items. When the ultimate in mobility is needed, light duty tables are often not the solution. An inspection cart featuring a light panel, casters, and hydraulic lift makes the perfect workbench. It can be pulled around the facility floor as needed or used in training applications. Other optional features expand the number of potential applications for this work cart. This unit is the perfect partner for a heavy duty industrial table. Fluorescent lighting used in lighted tables is covered by frosted glass. Consumers can specify the size of the glass area, with 12-inch multiples available for the width. A dimmable switch is included with the lighting and each fluorescent bulb is a maximum of 40 watts. Though standard sizes of light duty tables with lifting functions are available, custom dimensions can also be specified. When customizing this industrial table, a consumer can choose other features designed to meet the special needs of the user or work environment. Light duty tables are not the only versions available with illuminated table top lighting. Most of the workbench styles offered can usually be ordered with illuminated surfaces. Whether a lab or cleanroom table is needed, consumers will not need to go without the light feature. Ordering directly from the manufacturer, allows for more flexibility in terms of final product design. Many manufacturers can build light table furniture to meet your exact specifications. In labs where space is at a premium or where room dimensions are irregular, it is often difficult to find light duty tables and storage options that are compatible. A manufacturer has no problem designing furniture, shelving, and cabinets that will fit into tight corners or small square footage. Most of these items are delivered pre-assembled, eliminating time and frustration for the consumer. Everything arrives ready to use once it is removed from its packaging. Ordering heavy, medium, or light duty tables with tabletop lighting, casters, hydraulic lifts, and other features is not difficult. When shopping online, consumers simply enter the height, depth, and width of the table, the width of the lighted area, and finish or colors for the frame and top. They can even view samples of optional features and access live help if they have any questions.
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Lean and Manufacturing Basics

In order to improve competitiveness and profitability, a Company must have basic technique and important strategy which is in lean manufacturing and processing. A Manufacturing Company need to reduce unnecessary work practices and reduce wastes, this is the fundamental function of lean manufacturing. Due to turbulent concerns and political affecting all countries, companies are facing challenges to be able to keep their efficiency and profitability. Lean manufacturing and processing not totally eliminate the seven “forms of waste” within the systems and the work environment, that the principle of lean manufacturing. The seven “forms of waste” are motion, waiting, transportation, over processing, defects, inventory and scrap. Even in good performing company lean manufacturing and processing aims to drastically improve the competitiveness of struggling or a troubled, restore and to boost it, not only to reduce operational costs that is lean and manufacturing and processing principles. Lean and manufacturing processing learning is basically become mandatory for global and major companies. To be able to survive the hard and rough company challenges ahead in the era of complete globalization, companies must to act right away. Lean manufacturing and processing Enjoying huge benefits of reducing operational costs and moving along is what companies get with lean manufacturing and processing. That could further help company to grow organically and expand by using the save amounts from generated savings. However lean manufacturing and processing is now very easy to adopt and implement. To be able to ensure efforts is succeeded the company should religiously and really pay particular attention to details. There is no doubt that by adopting lean and manufacturing and processing principles, many companies are surely and apparently on the rise. Companies that aren’t doing lean manufacturing and processing’s the techniques and the strategies properly most of the time they are not aimed results and achieving target. Companies’ efforts and capital infusion initiative futile and wasted is surely made if ineffective and insufficient of lean and processing principles. Its principle would not stand on its own that it should be noted also. Companies should strive to attain their goals harder to embrace and adopting lean manufacturing. Learn about lean manufacturing and processing Learn more about lean manufacturing and processing is what companies to really get involved advised by experts. It really makes sense because it can surely help companies get on with current challenges and concerns affecting all institution around the globe. To learn more about lean processing techniques and principles, companies have many ways on how to do it. Experts and professionals who can really help the companies maximize and attain the benefits of such strategies can be hired by the companies. Companies will entail additional investments and additional costs by hiring lean manufacturing and processing experts. Companies shouldn’t really mind it because the implementation of lean manufacturing and processing benefits will surely offset the minimal costs of learning it. In another way to intently and specifically learn manufacturing and processing techniques and principles, key personnel can be designated by the company. Many companies around the world are currently practicing it. Companies had the personnel to learn manufacturing and processing principles by attend seminars and literature about it. Everything that personnel key learned he will relay the message and everything to the whole staffs. The entire organization must be distributed and communicated the knowledge and the skills, which is the important thing to do. The benefits achieved by the companies are much more significant compared to cost of learning manufacturing and processing, all companies should learn it.
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Andon Boards in lean manufacturing

Andon can be defined as "visual control" device that shows machine, process status or line. Most lean manufacturing systems need this device as it is very useful to reduce production waste in all levels. By using andon boards, a company can monitor and ensure productivity easily. Manufacturing warehouse use this tool to see order status or priorities in an instant way even from more than 100 feet away. This device can also function as early warning devices since audible alarms or warning messages are installed in the device. In short, it can be said that this communication tool leads to a better coordination of orders, priorities and parts in a lean manufacturing system. This good coordination finally leads to a better customer service. The use of andon boards replaces the role of traditional communication tool in lean manufacturing systems. With this device, now a company doesn't need to use clip boards, white boards or emails to communicate. Mostly, the boards are able to project a number of 4" characters. If you wish the device to display smaller characters, it is also possible. Andon boards can display 2.1" high characters for a company with smaller areas or less viewing distance. You can also install Windows applications inside the displays. Thus the applications will operate on the boards just like when they run on a PC. HMI applications like Wonderware, Iconics, GE Cimplicity and Visual Plant can also be operated on this device. With the benefits of andon boards, the device has enhanced lean manufacturing tremendously. Therefore, this communication tool has to be developed further to reduce more waste. The older ones usually display only data with fixed and restricted to single word headings. In addition, the data is lost when the display changes. To improve the performance, Gemba Solutions have developed the new andon board called OEE Impact Andon Board. This device offers flexibility and displays that users can configure with a PC. The new OEE Impact Andon Board will give another dimension for lean manufacturing. Its software will inform you how you fare against target by calculating TAKT times. This device can also view progress within work shifts or within a specific period of time. In addition, this latest communication device will inform historical summary that reports targets, down-times, reject. The new products are very helpful since they help a company knows how well their production is going. The EOO Impact Andon Boards can also use powerful software to track problem areas in case the results are less than what you expect.
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lean manufacturing

A lean manufacturing implementation has as one of its major goals reducing and eliminating waste. The waste that Lean solutions seek to eliminate takes several forms. And for each form of waste there is a specific tool that lean manufacturing consultants use for identification and analysis and, ultimately, elimination. Let's look at just a couple. Because the goal of Lean implementation is, among other things, to eliminate waste, the first object is to identify the areas or forms of waste in a particular company. Generally, though, here's what lean manufacturing examines first with respect to waste: unnecessary human motion, non-value-added conveyance of product, over-production, excess inventory, under-utilized space, over-processing, unneeded waiting, and poor utilization of talent. Two of the most easily addressed and corrected involve human motion and conveyance of product. Unnecessary Human Motion Whenever employees are engaged in non-value-added motion, within the context of production, waste occurs. Very often, both managers and employees are unaware when this kind of wasteful activity occurs. And that's why a spaghetti diagram can be so useful. This is a tool/technique used to identify and so eliminate the waste of unnecessary human motion. It involves, in the initial stage, a consultant's following an employee for between 30 minutes to two hours. In order for this to work properly, consultants have to explain to the employees, in order to obtain accurate data, exactly what is being done and why, making sure to emphasize that processes and layouts-not individual employees-are being evaluated. What happens is that that the work path taken by the employee(s) during this period is mapped out to determine efficiency and contribution to value-added activity. Here, then, are the well defined steps in producing a spaghetti diagram to eliminate unnecessary human motion: 1.The date, the time(s), and the specific process being mapped must be noted. 2.The group should be informed about what is going on and a volunteer called for. 3.The actual work paths of this volunteer taken throughout his shift are traced out on the map. 4.Any stops are noted and sequentially numbered, as well as the time duration for each stop. 5.Anything involving over-reaching or "non-comfort" motion is noted. 6.Any inherent disruptions in the work path and flow should be especially noted. 7.The reason for trips must be recorded. By means of this spaghetti diagram consultants can determine where motion is wasted and formulate a plan to eliminate that waste. Non-value-added Conveyance of Product The analytic tool used in a lean manufacturing implementation to find and eliminate the waste that results from the non-value-added conveyance of product is most often a "process walk." In this, the movement of a product is followed across all processes-from initial quality inspection through compounding through filling through all successive segments of the process to the final product ready for shipment. And here's what the process walk entails: 1.Literally walking at a brisk pace to follow the product through its production processes. 2.Asking questions of the people involved to find out origin of the part/ingredient, its next destination, and the means of conveyance. 3.Having employees assist in the observation of processes. 4.Recording delays for preparation and meeting requirements in moving the product from one location to the next. 5.Making a point to mark on the record material-handling delays. With this tool consultants can locate waste and bottlenecks and propose Lean solutions to promote process efficiency. The right lean manufacturing consultants with the right analytic tools can make your lean manufacturing implementation a profitable success
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A 20 Step Roadmap for lean manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing is being utilized by businesses of all sizes today. Although it took a few years to become mainstream, the success stories from mid-size to large corporations have pushed lean manufacturing down to very small organizations. Most of the large corporations employ a few lean experts. Many mid-size and most small businesses do not have lean manufacturing expertise in the company. It is common that a few individuals have attended a lean manufacturing seminar or read a few books, but lack the expertise to develop a roadmap. The reason most courses and seminars do not teach a "roadmap" is because the tools are best applied to problems or bottlenecks, rather than forcing the tool use on the opportunity. For example, a machine that sets up once per week in 30 minutes probably doesn't warrant a week of SMED activity. However, a roadmap can be used with common sense. Lean manufacturing has been called "common sense manufacturing", although not always "common practice". Lean Manufacturing Roadmap: Form team (mix of lean manufacturing and relevant business experience) Develop communication and feedback channel for everyone Meet with everyone and explain the initiative Begin to train all employees (lean overview, 8 wastes, standard operations, kaizen, RCPS, PDCA) Facility Analysis - Determine the gap between current state and a state of "lean" 5S - It is the foundation of lean. Workplace organization is critical for any lean initiative TPM - begin total productive maintenance early (used throughout lean) Value Stream Mapping - Determine the waste across the entire system 7 (or 8) Waste Identification - Use with value stream mapping to identify system waste Process Mapping - a more detailed map of each process Takt time - determine need to produce on all processes, equipment OEE & 6 Losses - determine the losses on all processes and equipment Line Balance - Use if necessary with takt time and OEE SMED - push setup times down to reduce cycle time, batch quantity, and lower costs Pull/One Piece Flow/Continuous Flow Analysis - utilize kanban and supermarkets Analyze Quality at the Source Application - poor quality stopped at the source Implement Error Proofing Ideas Cellular Manufacturing/Layout & Flow Improvement - Analyze facility and each process Develop Standardized Operations - concurrently with SMED, line balance, flow, layouts Kaizen - continue improving operations, giving priority to bottlenecks within the system The specific implementation plan should be developed from the facility analysis. The analysis identifies areas of opportunity in every area of the business, including sales, service, engineering, maintenance, production, quality, shipping, and administrative functions. Some lean manufacturing projects within a lean initiative require the tools of six sigma to find the improvement answers. The lean manufacturing team needs to be trained to understand when the lean tools must be supplemented to either solve the problem or maximize the improvement. Kaizen events may use all of the lean tools (and some six sigma tools) to meet the team's objective. Kaizen events are conducted on an ongoing basis to achieve a state of "lean". For example, a process may need a quick throughput improvement. The kaizen blitz could include focused SMED (single minute exchange of die) and OEE analysis. The kaizen might have an objective to reduce setup time from 80 minutes to 60 minutes in 4 days. It is important to keep an enterprise view with the analysis and roadmap. No single operation should be improved at the expense of the entire system. For example, if a bottleneck is happening at Process B, improving Process A prior to B only hurts the system worse. A larger scale example is improving throughput if shipping cannot handle the volume. Although many improvements cause bottlenecks elsewhere, forcing a larger known problem is rarely a good idea. The roadmap above is only one example. It could be shown with many different variations. However, there is a logical sequence to many of the tools. Value stream mapping is almost always conducted very early on in the process. The 5S system provides a foundation for most other tools. TPM is large and plays an important role in OEE improvement, and therefore must be started early. The key is to have a plan and get started. The path to lean will not be straight and it never ends. Don't let the pursuit of perfection get in the way of being "better" today.
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Six Sigma Mistake Proofing

Mistake Proofing (or Poka-Yoke as it is known in Japan) is one of several control concepts where the solution is not dynamic by nature, as is the case with a closed loop feedback control system. It should be noted that poka-yoke is very consistent with the fundamental aims and philosophy of Six Sigma and has wide applicability in manufacturing, engineering, and transactional processes. It involves actions designed to eliminate errors, mistakes or defects in our everyday activities and processes. The methodology involves complete understanding of the cause and effect relationship and identification of the simplest remedy that can be applied to eliminate the occurrence of that particular error in the future. Sometimes this involves an addition of a simple feature, the creation of a check list, a change in the sequence of operation, a highlighted field on a form, a software message that reminds the operator, or some other way of helping to ensure that mistakes are going to be totally eliminated or substantially reduced. Often, Mistake-Proofing focuses on errors produced by humans, whether it is the machine operator, the person filling out a form, or someone packing materials, etc. While this source of error can be large, it is also possible to apply Mistake-Proofing methodology in many other aspects of our business. The emphasis should be put on modifying processes so those mistakes are impossible to make, instead of blaming employees for making mistakes. The point is we must improve all aspects of our Business to be robust to mistakes or errors, no matter what the source. The traditional application of Mistake-Proofing is in a production environment where a change is made to an assembly sequence or a tool to prevent an error from being made. Examples include: o A stop is added to a drill press o A hydraulic ram is added to align a component during assembly o A lever is designed into an assembly fixture to index the part o A pin is added so the part cannot be installed backwards Mistake Proofing is the primary form of Control for transactional procedures in that it can be used to prevent a process from going out of control or to bring a process back into control. Some examples include: o Fields on a data entry form are highlighted as being critical o An authorization procedure is introduced to control spend o A check list is created to ensure all items are taken into account when planning a training session o A new policy is developed to ensure that expense claims are completed properly
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