Rosti Automotive, Pickering, Yorks.
The company were brought in to help raise on-time-delivery of large plastic painted moulded parts for Jaguar Land Rover. ‘Bay 6’ was the target improvement area and acted as the final assembly area for a range of parts received from the in-house paint shop, following in-house moulding.
There were several key objectives
- Raise yield to achieve customer run rates
- Add production of the new Discovery model parts within the existing footprint
- Optimise flow throughout the area
- Raise skill levels and train Operators, Supervisors, and Managers, to sustain change
The approach
- Initially diagnose the current state
- Calculate necessary takt-times, improve and balance the process cycle times accordingly
- Remove WIP stock between process steps
- Implement JIT delivery of parts using Kanban techniques
- Design the future state and assist physical implementation of new layouts, flows, methods, and improved cycle times
The solution
Initial diagnosis showed a combination of issues. There had been limited balancing of processes and so labour had to be added to potentially achieve delivery needs, and even then, it was often insufficient. Many of the Operators were new and were choosing to build up excessive WIP/ inventory in the belief it was more efficient in the event of stoppages elsewhere. The excessive inventory was in fact obscuring many production problems and allowing them not to circumnavigate issues by carrying out other work.
The WIP areas were not adding value and also increased walking distances, so over time, the new balanced times were sequentially introduced by working with the Operators, removing their WIP and coaching them to see and to trust the new way of working.
A review of the major production-stop problems were pareto-analysed, and problem-solving techniques such as cause/effect, and 5Why’s employed with staff to establish and resolve the key causes of defects and stoppages.
Material Control were asked to support a ‘milk round’ delivery process that replaced wholesale dumping of parts in the area that used valuable space. In turn, this facilitated the overall flow concept that had been missing. Bay 6 was re-designed so that Material Control could drop-off parts around a circular-orientated unit, with parts Kanbans (set spaces that only accept a given minimal quantity of parts or materials) on the periphery of the unit for easy sight and access. Similarly, finished goods Kanbans were set up to optimise reduced quantities of finished goods, by working with Material control to remove FG on their return from bringing parts in – so an efficiency saving for Material Control too.
Operators were initially amused when we told them not to build too many assemblies – previously they thought they were doing the right thing in over-producing because stoppages always caused more supply.
The ‘future state’ concept involved removing all of the WIP areas, transforming to incoming deliveries from material control of ‘little and often’, using RAG symbols and Kanban to indicate the next hours’ needs of parts. This meant we could ‘flow’ the entire area, and, importantly free up 30% more floorspace to incorporate the impending Discovery work.
As this now became a much more fine-tuned process, any stoppages would have more impact than previously, where they were lost in inefficient, unmeasured environment. So hourly tracking of production performance against target was introduced, with RAG indicators for management to react before an issue became a crisis. To support this, Team Briefs were re-introduced (they always intended to carry them out, but often problems meant they were ‘too busy’), as a mandated process, led by the Shift Leaders, and attended by all staff, with periodic visits from Senior Management when important information needed to be cascaded. As the Performance Board charts were talked through by the Shift Leaders, the Operators were invited to comment and add further improvement ideas, where previously they could neither see the performance, nor have any structured opportunity to input. A win-win for everybody.
The benefits
- Rosti successfully implemented the additional 30% capacity required for inclusion of the new Land Rover Discovery model without additional floor-space – which actually was not available anywhere across the site.
- Delivery performance increased by 48% and met customer run rates, where previously there were regular stoppages
- Right First Time quality increased by 27%
- Managers and Shift Leaders really saw and understood lean concepts and the real benefits – previously it was all ‘classroom theory’. They felt they had real control of the processes and their performance
- Operators thrived on positively contributing roles in a controlled and standardised environment
- The customer noticed the performance increase too, and commenced an investment programme with their supplier