Re: Factory process monitoring & control
- From: Robert Adsett <sub2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 10:47:49 -0500
In article <G7ydnRp5dq7TCWjanZ2dnUVZ_qygnZ2d@localnet>, Gary Lynch
says...
When an order comes in for a specific lot size of a specific
final good, the facility starts with raw material, which
must be cut, machined, polished, and drilled to tight
tolerances at multiple workstations, each feeding the next.
A lot starts with a certain amount of overage, to allow for
scrap along the way, which can happen at any stage. Some
types of damage can be repaired in another stage. Other
damaged goods may be recycled in a smaller product, and some
must be scrapped.
I see two problems
- High scrap
- No visible way to see what the progress of a project is.
<snip>
The employer has tried attaching traveller documents to each
lot of material, requiring employees to fill out forms at
the beginning & end of their processing steps, but the
documents often become separated from their material and are
lost. There is no central process monitoring system to catch
these shortfalls automatically as soon as they occur, and
not means to compile statistics that would identify specific
stages/employees/products with the majority of the problems.
I think data collection compounds the problem. It gives the illusion of
control without actually offering any. This kind of data collection is
good for detemining what happened not what is occuring.
My bet would be that if you cleaned up the line and asked the employess
what the problems are they would be able to identify most of them. I
would also bet there is a fair amout of staging of product between
stages, hiding problems until well after they occurred compunding the
problem.
<snip>
As the customer becomes more acquainted with the system's
capability, he would want to be able to:
- Identify bottlenecks that jam up the pipe,
- Compare productivity of different employees or machines,
or shifts, etc.
Two suggestions
- Get the employer out on the floor for a bit. Actually working
not just observing.
- Read up on lean, maybe get some help in that area. This is the
kind of thing lean was developed to combat. Ideally there should be no
WIP accumulating between stages. If there is no WIP then at each stage
you must have all the items you need for the order and they must be
correct.
Sorry not much in the way of technical suggestions but this apears to be
more of a process, culture and people problem than a technical one. I
think automation would only help by reducing effort if the paper method
already produced results. If the paper method is the miserable failure
it appears to be from your description I think all automating will do is
give you an expensive miserable failure. Changing culture is not an
easy task and not for thr faint of heart. It'll require someone with
conviction and support, a lot of people will resist changing their waya
unless their is a palpable crisis.
<more snip>
Robert
--
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