While offering cooperation to managers, the first reaction I recognize is a doubt. To improve productivity is really possible? Why it would happen this time on a Project (and not last week/month)? What is that what makes the Project different?
Well, it’s hard to give a specific answer. General task is to found a principle, a habit what acts as an obstacle in material (information) flow and implement a change to alleviate its power. The obstacle (bottleneck) appears in each company in a different shape, as well the corrective action, just like in following examples:
- Tiles production (Hungary)
There is a tile producer in Hungary (capacity: 6 million m2), coating what gives the smoothness and shine (glaze) is produced in small unit of it. In a moment management realized: the import glaze cost 18 EUR/kg, from own production 22, so seemed more profitable to close the unit and outsource the production.
Productivity project focused on implementation and evaluation of KPI’s and in 6 month succeed to decrease the own cost below 16 EUR/m2. Changes are possible!
2. Wood processing (Romania)
In a wood processing company dryer of veneer is a bottleneck. During project observed: conveyor loaded under nominal capacity from the fear of stack, what would result in a 20 minute of downtime.
Productivity project focusing on KPI values included maintenance team in daily evaluation, and regular maintenance made possible sheets didn’t stack anymore! This implementation led to 16% average volume increase of bottleneck position!
3. Metal air tank production, Hungary
Productivity analysis discovered bottleneck at semi-automatic turner machines. Shift (8 hours) production was 1800 pieces for long years, however machines had capacity for 2500 pieces.
During 26 weeks project implemented additional cleaning step into operation instructions, what resulted shift production to increase to 2250 piece.
4. Silicone products for mum and baby
A well conducted company in West-Hungary faced stagnation in produced volume, despite implemented and evaluated KPI system and obviously existing room for improvement.
Productivity audit discovered GEF (GE Factor) in calculation method, what has role to correct values in case of disturbing events (down time, decreased number of operators). This method is OK, when calculating and following personal productivity, and led to mistake while used to calculate machine productivity. A simple correction made disturbances and effects visible!
5. Cluttered office, untidy production
Multinational plastic mold injection company in Romania facing long changeover times, oil spots, high scrap rate and lack of space at shop floor.
Visiting offices, discovered desk covered with descriptions, orders, spare parts, office needs 30 cm high! Manager, who can’t keep order in his office, is unable to do that in production either.
Implementation of 5S in offices and production changed situation dramatically. Room and task for improvement became visible immediately!
6. Productivity project is a teamwork led by specialist!
Productivity project at a wood processing company in Romania included direct manager trainings, where supervisors learned to give feedback upon value of daily production KPI’s.
Motivated by desire for positive evaluation they proposed a machine layout change in order to decrease transportation time. Cumulated result of changes contributed to decrease 22,18 (worked man hour per 1 m3 of product) to 16,55.
Resume:
Above experiences tells me: there are no secrets, each outcome has its own reason and 99% of them are measurable and improvable. One important question remains to be answered: are you going to ask for better results, or you just let the status as it is?