Background

Our client produced labels for consumer good and food products. The company lacked the capacity to meet its customers' volume and variety requirements. This demand was met with additional shifts and selective outsourcing.

The recent loss of large client orders and contractual penalties for late deliveries made , the company stood to lose money and orders if it could not meet promised delivery dates.

Business challenge

The company needed to increase capacity without a large capital equipment investment. Greatly reducing the non-value added time in the production process could provide the needed production capacity. One source of non-value-added (NVA) time was relatively long changeover and setup times (in some cases more than three hours).

Solution

• CBS employed the Rapid Change Event (RCE) methodology to improve the process. The RCE Process is much like the Toyota Kaizen or GE Workout processes. RCEs rely on the knowledge, ideas and recommendations of the employees.
• A team of employees was assembled. CBS trained the team on Lean Production tools, specifically, SMED - Single Minute Exchange of Dies and other quick setup/changeover techniques.
• The team then observed several changeovers or "make readies." All related process steps were listed and categorized as:
  • Value-add (VA) vs. Non-value-add (NVA)
  • Internal (machine is running) or External (machine not running) events
• The RCE team analyzed all the data collected and formulated several recommendations. Once piloted, the team developed a final recommendation, and they developed a set of Make Ready procedures to support the recommendation.

Results

• The resulting recommendation reduced the average changeover by 60% - from 100 minutes to 39 minutes.
• Empowered workforce to make informed decisions regarding their work areas and procedures.
• Enabled the plant to reduce weekend shifts and reduce the need of temporary workers.
• Cost avoidance of adding another press ($300-500K