An aerospace components factory supplying mechanical and structural parts to several leading aircraft manufacturers.
The factory was unable to produce enough good quality parts to supply all of their customer requirements. As the production backlog was rapidly building from weeks to months, a real improvement was needed quickly to ensure the client retained key contracts.
Firstly, from line studies, cycle time analysis, part tracing and identification of WIP locations, the bottleneck process of the production line was clearly identified.
Through consultation with the shop floor team running this area, a detailed breakdown of all of the causes of lost time was obtained, and a data collection system put in place to record incidences of each problem.
The data obtained from this exercise quickly revealed distinct patterns of failure in several of the top problems being experienced - many problems were far more prevalent in certain product groups, or were only evident at specific locations on the product. Until this point, problem solving had only been attempted on anecdotal evidence.
The extra clarity that a solid data collection system brought to the area allowed for far more focused problem solving to begin on the top issues holding the area back. Through numerous trials carried out through the shop floor workers and rigorous analysis, several solutions to the biggest problems were identified.
The improvements delivered led to a 17% increase in the output of the area - and ensured it would no longer bottleneck the overall process.
Throughput improvements were driven hard on the shop floor to get the most out of capacity freed up by improved planning. Several engineering changes were made on the production lines to improve the speeds and availabilities of many different processes from belt ovens to depositing mechanisms - through careful and rigorous analysis and use of Newton’s structured problem solving techniques.
After 8 weeks, the throughput of the bottleneck area had increased by 43%, giving a saving of £213k - 140% above target, and bringing the factory much closer to its target year-end production.
|
