Like the process family cells, the “turret law” and local tool storage both go back to the database and the detailed knowledge it gives Rable about their operations: Knowing that a lathe turret should have X number of turning tools and Y boring bars to handle 80% of the jobs.
Kanban Cuts Inventory 45% One of Rable’s large oil and gas customers helped drive their lean journey by challenging them to produce assemblies within a kanban system. Rable had been making roughly 400 components for this customer, but no assemblies, and trying to meet demand through forward planning of the inventory. The customer gave Rable an annual commitment and asked them to combine some of the components into a dozen sub- assemblies, but only when they issued an electronic kanban. So Rable set up internal stations for making the subas- semblies and instituted their own kanban system to control all the components that go into those assemblies. “We start- ing pulling product as we needed it, instead of forward plan- ning. This helped us to stay more in tune with our customer’s usage and replenish components only when we needed to, which dramatically reduced inventory while opening up ma- chine capacity,” explains Carter. “For example, one assem- bly that goes into pumps is a valve spool we run on a dual spindle, dual turret, live tool, Y-axis machine. The part also gets honed and anodized. We make thousands of these and the pull system allowed us to reduce our inventory by 45%. “It’s been very good for us and the customer loves it because they don’t have to worry about running out. They’ve been growing and they get to add more business while keep- ing the head-count down.”
“Seeing” is “Smart Scheduling” By 2012, Rable’s lean practices had enabled such growth that they were juggling 3500 different parts over the course of a year, more than twice the number that inspired the change. That’s when they took another simple, common sense step. They installed a visual scheduling system, extending 100' (30.5 m) down both sides of a hallway. Every scheduling tag on the board represents an individual job, with a miniature drawing of the part to make identification easier. A computerized system looks out eight weeks to project load, but the visual boards drive Rable’s short-term scheduling of one to two weeks. The benefits are almost unbelievable. “Let’s say you’re running a job and coming close to the end,” explains Carter. “You look at the board and see a job
that’s very similar but it’s three jobs away. You know you’re virtually setup for that job already, you can do it just by tweaking a few things. So you go to production control to see if there’s time in the schedule to allow you to shift this around. If they approve, it typically amounts to a very large setup reduction. It’s made a huge impact, especially the bigger and busier we’re getting. We’re generally saving in the neighborhood of 65% in our setup costs.” Aside from the visual aid, the key point here is that these discoveries are made at the cell, not by manage- ment or production control. Even with the benefit of the Process Family Code System and cell optimization, achieving peak efficiency depends on the machine opera- tors taking the initiative to look for, recognize, and act on opportunities. It’s that drive to always look for ways to make things bet- ter that has boosted sales-per-employee by 61% in under 10 years. It’s part of their mindset. It’s lean. Or if you prefer: It’s focused common sense.
Precision Rotary Tables
World-class ULTRARONTM and ULTRADEXTM Rotary Tables
Inspection • Radial Milling • Calibration Index Position • Contouring • Circle Division 4th
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Telephone 586 977-9000 Website:
www.agdavis.com
Fax 586 977-9190 E-mail:
agdavis@agdavis.com February 2015 |
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