The problems and solutions of Cellular Manufacturing

Nothing is more frustrating to a manager than a department which is failing to meet productivity demands. Various reasons can be stated as to why a department is failing. These companies are failing to meet the demands of their customers on a regular basis. But, one reason can be that many of the manufacturers in the country are struggling with an aging system and Cellular Manufacturing: One-Piece Flow for Workteams can be the solution. Machinery being scattered throughout the department, or even shop, with unrelated jobs running side by side and parts not located by machines can call for great problems and AIAG Books can help to give you a solution. Standard work for the Shopfloor is also a good guide.

Tooling or fixtures stacked away from machines and even difficult to locate, can lead to a department that struggles or even fails to meet customer demands.

Essential ways to tackle the problem.

After learning about all the problems, let’s learn about an effective way to eliminating these kinds of problems. So, to make a department run more efficiently you have to utilize the departmental cellular manufacturing. It should also be known that it is definitely an undertaking which involves the total commitment of management, quality control, shipping, assembly and manufacturing the employees too. The answers can be given through a more efficient running and productive department representation.

How should the construction be set up?

A working cell should include selection of area to set up the cell while on production. You can use a mock up using cardboard templates of machines. You can use them and their placements and collect data of machine run times. Employees can be used for a walk through of production should be studied and data collected. A positive and a negative input from the employees should be taken and it is important too. After researching the data collected from the walk through you could meet again and perform mock up for each change. You could also do that for each study. The final one should involve employee works to be studied by the department.

Source : http://bsstandards.tumblr.com/post/143521070340/the-problems-and-solutions-of-cellular

Basics of Overall Equipment Effectiveness or OEE

The second of the eight pillars of TPM is autonomous maintenance. One of the parts of the autonomous maintenance is OEE for Operators: Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It follows a structured approach to increase the skill levels of personnel whivh people will understand. They will also manage and improve their equipment and processes. Identifying Waste on the Shopfloor is a good guide book. The goal is to change operators from being reactive to working in a more proactive way and the Cmti handbook will help you a lot. To achieve optimal conditions that eliminate minor equipment you have to work hard a lot. It shall in turn stop and reduce breakdowns and defects.

More on Overall Equipment Effectiveness.

According to availability, performance and quality the concept of OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness breaks the performance of a manufacturing unit into three distinct and measurable components. All the components, individually or not, points to an aspect of the process. It can be targeted for improvement or just casually. The principle of OEE may also be applicable to any individual work center. It may also be rolled up to department or levels of a plant. This is a tool that also allows drilling down extremely specific analysis. They can be part number, shift or any of several other parameters. It is quiet unlikely that any manufacturing process can run at complete OEE. Hence, many manufacturers are benchmarking their industry. It is to set a challenging target where the 85% is not really uncommon.

The process rate of the Overall Equipment Effectiveness.

The performance portion of the OEE Metric is also known as the process rate. It is a series of calculation which represents the speed at which the work center runs. The center usually runs as a percentage of its designated speed. Additionally, the performance metric is a pure measurement of speed. The speed that is designed to differentiate among the effects of quality and availability is mentioned here. Losses incurred due to wasted performance, often called speed losses, are often not determined. A common approach is to assign the unknown losses as speeded ones.

Source : https://sites.google.com/site/bsstandardss/basics-of-overall-equipment-effectiveness-or-oee

Things to maintain during Autonomous maintenance for operators

Autonomous maintenance for operators is the independent maintenance that is carried out by the operators. These operators themselves maintain the machines without the help of dedicated maintenance technicians. Total productive maintenance or TPM is much like TQM or total quality management where this concept is the core. Shopfloor series books can give you a guide to this principle. But, the concept of TPM will give more responsibility and authority to the operators in comparison to TQM. It releases the technical personnel to do more improvement in the works. You can easily buy standards online in India.

Cleaning and inspection during maintenance.

For the autonomous maintenance, this is the first stage to begin with a similar purpose like a shine stage. Operators remove all the dirt and grime from the machines. This uncovers and highlights any problems within the machine and it is not meant for the perfection. The machine needs to be taken out of production. For this all the fluids are to be drained and covers are to be removed. It is done so that every part of the machine is cleaned and inspected. The grime of past years has to be removed and the machine has to be brought back to how it was when it was first purchased. A thorough inspection further reveals each and every damage or wear of the machine. The cleaning and inspection should be done by the operators and maintenance crew. They are responsible for the machine. They will become more familiar with the machines details. Hence, they will be able to see where dirt accumulates and the problems occurring due to it.

Removal of contamination while the process of Autonomous maintenance.

When the operators clean and inspect the machines it is your duty as a maintenance staff to look at where the dirt that is being removed is coming from. Whether it is being produced inside the machine or it is coming into the machine from outside should be the major concern. They should seek to remove or minimize these sources of deadly contaminations. It forces us in to cleaning our machines.

Source : https://storify.com/bsstandards/things-to-maintain-during-autonomous-maintenance-f

Everything you wanted to know about TPM for Every Operator

What is TPM?

TPM or total productive management is a system which maintains and improves the production and quality systems. It evaluates the performance of machines, equipment, processes and employees to generate comprehensive and exhaustive analysis. It calculates time required for each process, to produce results which reflect the organization’s production capabilities. AIAG manuals can tell you more about the process, along with details pertinent to pull production for the shopfloor.

What does it do?

TPM seeks to increase productivity of equipment, by demanding a relatively smaller investment towards maintenance. It is usually considered to consist of eight pillars: focused improvement, autonomous maintenance, planned maintenance, quality maintenance, cost deployment, early equipment management, training and education and striving for a safe, healthy environment. It deploys the entire workforce towards a common mission, which is managing growth.

What is pull production?

It is a common occurrence in organizations, where final processes are ‘pulled’ from previous processes, which pull from the processes before it, and so on. This allows businesses to work without creating excesses and avoiding waste. This is also known to help with time management, as borrowing from prior processes can greatly save time and effort. It comes in handy typically when production is based on actual demand, as opposed to push production, in which case production is not based on actual demand.

What are the benefits of pull production?

One of the key advantages is that the pull production can work with a limited inventory, thereby saving you potentially huge costs in replenishing stocks. It follows a customer centric approach to service, where the consumer’s needs are prioritized over everything else. It follows a make-to-order pattern of business, and is generally known to improve cash flow.

However, one must insure that balanced systems are in place before incorporating pull production. Setup times tend to affect throughput and any glitches in the process will lead to customer dissatisfaction.

Pull production can go a long way in eliminating risk, wastage and unpredictability, provided it is implemented while exercising great caution.

Source : http://uboyerocih.jimdo.com/2016/03/22/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-tpm-for-every-operator/

Following the Cellular Manufacturing: One-Piece Flow for Work teams

The book Cellular Manufacturing: One-Piece Flow for Work teams is the perfect book on the working of a manufacturing business based on the basic cellular concepts. It helps to introduce the teamwork and basic cellular manufacturing concepts in a business. It helps managers to understand the process and encourage them to build an individual production cell. This can be done through participation of new designs of production cells. These AIAG Books give such wonderful concise information that helps you to get all the different members on board. This helps in the smoother production process on the whole.

How are these books helpful?

The most important thing these books help in doing is giving the managers a clear idea regarding the Standard Work for the Shopfloor. You can use this book to encourage everyone to get onto the board and participate in the smooth running of the floor. The books gives you detailed instruction on how to decrease the lead time, ways to decrease the amount of products keeps as work in progress inventory and even helps to understand the basics of profit drawing waster. The good part about these books is that you will find the language very easy and approachable. You can use the words in the book to explain things to your staff and sub staff.

Another bog benefit of opting for these books is that each of the chapters in the books is followed by a little summary. The summary is a comprehensive overview of the whole chapter. This helps to reinforce the concepts that have been taught in that particular chapter. It also has many reflection questions that can be used to check your understanding. Another very good thing about this book is that you can use these questions during group discussion or seminar. So this encourages the team to come together and work in a collaboration throughout the process.

Thus this book is a very good book that offers very simple and cost effective approach towards building basic knowledge among the work force. It helps to build basic knowledge and improve the key manufacturing of the production process.

Source : http://bsstandards.page.tl/Following-the-Cellular-Manufacturing-d--One_Piece-Flow-for-Work-teams.htm

Eliminating and identifying waste on the Shopfloor

What is OEE for Operators: Overall Equipment Effectiveness?

OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a system of hierarchical metrical evaluation devised by Seiichi Nakajima in the 1960s. It gauges how effectively a manufacturing operation is utilized. It is a means of assessing labor efficiency, so that the organization can keep track of its progress and observe its flaws. It identifies areas for improvement and how time, labor, efficiency can all be enhanced if combined to work together in a synchronized fashion. More about it can be found in the CMTI handbook.

 How does it work?

OEE takes into consideration three factors while tabulating results.  The time the machine is running for, the quantity of products the machine is producing, and the quantity of output of goods. It considers all three factors to generate a combined score, which indicates overall efficiency of the machine. The analysis thus acquired can help organizations implement newer standards, manage inventory and also handle the workforce.

 How does it benefit me?

OEE is a universally accepted form of measurement and is used as the norm in almost all places. It makes tabulation easy by reducing all pertinent statistics to just one coherent number. It helps organizations strategize better, to formulate its resources better so as to achieve better results with the same elements available.

What makes this even more user friendly is the fact that it can work even in mostly manual operations. This might require some pruning and tweaking, but is mostly achievable.

By enlisting operators to take responsibility for OEE, organizations can ensure that the division of labor is smooth and hassle free. This chalks out clear and well defined rules and duties, so as to maximize efficiency. This can enhance the capability of the machine, cause lesser wastage of resources both manual and mechanical, can save power and also time. Operators in charge of OEE tend to develop a great relation with the machine, understanding its needs and are better equipped to handle any malfunctions.

OEE is tried and tested by generations of workers and everyone who has used it has vouched for its viability.

Source : https://bsstandards.quora.com/Eliminating-and-identifying-waste-on-the-Shopfloor

Enhancing productivity through autonomous maintenance for operators

It is important to implement and ensure autonomous maintenance as it enables a harmonious relationship across the command chain. It empowers each element across all strata of the workforce, thereby achieving maximum results. The Shopfloor series books can come in handy if you are looking to reorganize your business skills and innovate your strategies. If you want to buy standards online in India, there are also other similar publications that you can check out.

What is autonomous maintenance?

Autonomous maintenance is the process by which operators handle machines rather than technical personnel. This eases the pressure on the trained individuals who can then focus on other aspects of management. Since it is the operators who handle the tools on a daily basis, handing over the responsibility of machinery to them helps foster better working relations and also makes them feel more involved. In traditional usage, operators would work with machines for inhumanly long hours, performing extraordinarily hard tasks. With better working conditions being instituted, these operators now only work with lubrication, bolt tightening, monitoring, etc.

Autonomous maintenance generally consists of seven steps, namely, cleaning and inspection, removing causes of contamination and improving access, defining cleaning and lubrication standards, training for general inspections, conduct autonomous inspections, implement visual maintenance management and strive for continuous improvement.

Importance of setting standardsIt is essential to chalk out standards in any organization. This helps document all progress, identify regressive patterns, infer time taken to complete one cycle of work, and therefore set goals for the company. This helps achieve optimum allocation of resources so that the best results can be achieved, with minimum wastage.

How will this help?

Standard work is unanimously agreed upon as a set of working principles that brings together people, materials and machines in the most efficient combination possible. It eliminates risk factors and elements of unpredictability, thereby increasing quality, efficiency and safety. Standard work devises a method by which inventory management can also be handled without any hassle. Pull production techniques are largely benefitted by this system, which improves performance standards exponentially.

This is a simple recap of easy procedures which will go a long way in aiding performance and progress.

Source : http://bsstandards.tumblr.com/post/141197048310/enhancing-productivity-through-autonomous