Lean Manufacturing

By cataloging all the steps in your production process and supply chain, lean manufacturing attempts to identify and eventually eliminate the inefficient steps that impede productivity, increase costs, and disrupt schedules.

One such inefficiency is overproduction, which produces more goods than you can sell. You’re stuck with holding the finished goods until they can be sold, even assuming that can happen. This increases storage costs, blocks cash flow, and ties up capital, raw materials, finished products, and resources that may be more productively used elsewhere.

How Overproduction Happens

Overproduction often happens due to five main reasons:

·      Unreliable processes that fail unpredictably or produce results that are hard to predict.

·      Batch sizes are too large to manage efficiently.

·      Unstable schedules that affect the efficiency of processes.

·      Unbalanced cells or departments that are too small in some areas or too large in others.

·      Inaccurate information that leads to incorrect product forecasts and schedules.

All these reasons tie into issues with preparation through activities that do not enhance value and increase waste. Lean manufacturing aims to solve these issues.

How Lean Manufacturing Eliminates Waste

One of the guiding principles of lean manufacturing is to identify all the steps needed to produce the final product.

·      By value stream mapping this flow on one sheet, you can better identify procedures that are inefficient and wasteful and eliminate them to smooth out the flow.

·      With the continuous improvement of your processes, you can improve productivity, change production time from months to weeks, save money for you and the customer, boost profits, and increase customer satisfaction.

Managing C-Parts with Bossard

Managing your C-parts like screws, nuts, and bolts is critical to creating a lean production system that increases efficiency. As one of the leading specialists in the production of fasteners, we are experts in this area of production. To eliminate overproduction and other costly mistakes in the manufacturing process, we deliver to you years of knowledge and experience with our Bossard Smart Factory Logistics services and systems.

To find out how our logistics improvement technology can work for your application, please contact us at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

When your business wants to improve productivity and increase profit, one strategy that you can adopt is lean manufacturing. This process identifies the wasteful steps in your manufacturing process and eliminates them to cut costs and speed up scheduling. Two important components of lean manufacturing are throughput and lead time.

Lead Time

Lead time defines the period from when the customers place the order for your product to when they finally receive what they ordered.

·      Short lead times satisfy customers more because they don’t have to wait too long to benefit from your product. They’ll broadcast your efficiency to their colleagues and friends, which can lead to more orders being placed by others.

·      Long lead times disappoint customers who may wonder what happened to their order. They might either cancel their order or demand compensation for waiting, which increases your cost. They’ll complain about your inefficiency to anyone who’ll listen and be reluctant to order from you again.

Throughput Time

Throughput time measures the period from when the raw materials are gathered to the completion of the final product. Start to finish throughput time is generally the sum of the following time intervals:

·      Processing Time is the amount of time spent in actual manufacturing on a machine. Raw materials become the finished product during this time.

·      Inspection Time is the time to ensure that the product meets quality standards. This can involve verifying components and sub-assemblies, testing electronics, and manually checking for any issues like incorrect fits.

·      Move Time is the interval spent moving materials or sub-assemblies from one machine to another or from warehouse inventory to the factory floor.

·      Queue Time, which is also known as wait time, comprises the times before processing, inspection, and moving.

If you improve throughput time, it will ultimately lead to shorter lead times.

How Bossard Can Help

Bossard reduces production process time and optimizes the value chain through our advanced Smart Factory Logistics systems and technologies. If you want to know how we can help you develop manufacturing processes and facilities that are agile and intelligent, contact us today at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

Lean principles streamline manufacturing processes by getting rid of inefficiency and waste. They can improve productivity, lower material costs, improve cycle time, and lift you above your competition. To implement lean manufacturing at your facility, follow its five basic principles.

1. Identify value.

Think about how, why, and when the customers need your product or service.

How much will it cost? How will you meet that price point through manufacturing and timely delivery? What requirements and standards do you have to follow to fulfill or exceed expectations? The answers to these questions define value.

2. Map the value stream.

The value stream defines every step that goes into creating the product from gathering raw materials to final delivery to the customer. Identify all the actions involved in each stage of procurement, design, production process, human resources, delivery, and customer support. You can ideally map all the steps on one page to give you an overall picture. You can then begin to identify those that are repetitious or wasteful and need to be disposed of.

We want to help you boost productivity and lower your Total Cost of Ownership. One way we do this is by conducting a value stream analysis focused on your fasteners and fastening technology to identify any areas of optimization.

3. Create flow.

Once you eliminate the waste from your stream, you can find ways to make the remaining steps flow smoothly and without delays or interruptions. If you ensure that all the steps for creating value happen in a tight sequence, you can guarantee a smooth process that leads to the customer. This may demand teamwork across all departments. The goal is an improvement in productivity and efficiency.

4. Establish pull.

Improving the product flow reduces the time for the product to reach your customers who want to be able to “pull” products as they are needed. Delivery times then drop from months to weeks. This prevents the expensive storage of materials or products waiting to be delivered. This results in savings for you and the customer.

5. Seek perfection.

Lean manufacturing demands continuous attention to process improvement and implementing efforts to continually improve. Making it part of your corporate culture lets you strive for perfection. Every employee must be involved. It is said that a process does not truly become lean until it has gone through these principles at least six times.

For more information about how Bossard can help you achieve your lean manufacturing goals, get in touch today at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.

Lean manufacturing is a process that is designed to reduce waste without negatively affecting productivity or quality. By focusing on those elements that add value to the manufacturing system and supply chain, and stripping away what does not, lean management achieves this goal. 

It Is Not a New Concept

As far back as Benjamin Franklin, innovative minds have been touting the idea of avoiding unnecessary costs by reducing waste. Franklin wrote about this concept as being more favorable in terms of profits compared to an increase in sales. 

Putting Lean Manufacturing into Practice

Put into practice, lean manufacturing encompasses tools designed to first identify waste then address this issue. Once that occurs, the costs of operating the system are reduced while productivity and quality are improved. 

The tools of lean manufacturing are varied and diverse. These can include the following: 

• multi-process handling
• visualizing workflow
• value stream mapping
• total productive maintenance
• control charts that check workloads
• error proofing
• production flow analysis
• single-point scheduling

It can also be achieved by removing unevenness found in the workflow. This is supported by visualizing the workflow so that areas of improvement are discovered.

Instead of being focused on eliminating waste, improving the workflow takes a system-wide perspective. Waste removal is a natural occurrence when this method is used. 

Lean Manufacturing Principles

Regardless of whether the focus of lean manufacturing practices is simply on reducing waste or it aims to address systemic unevenness in the workflow, the following principles drive the methodology: 

• flexibility
• automation
• perfect quality the first time
• visual control
• positive vendor management
• production flow
• continuous improvement
• minimizing different types of waste
• pull processing

Lean manufacturing, as a concept, is the ideal way for businesses to achieve their goals. It reduces waste, improves productivity, increases quality, and improves lead time.

However, to be most effective, the lean production system must be tailored to the specific company and its needs. This key factor is what drives the successful adaptation of lean manufacturing while enabling the achievement of the company’s unique goals. 

To learn more about how Bossard can help you reach your lean manufacturing goals and improve processes, contact us today at ProvenProductivity@bossard.com.