Flow

Welcome once again to one of my campfire chats about Lean implementation from the front lines.  Grab a cup of coffee and rest your bones while this cowboy talks today about flow.

What is flow really?  Flow is the seamless transition of work from one station to the next without any interuption.  From a flat piece of steel, to a stamping lasering process, to a forming process, to an assembly process, to a painting process, to a final assembly area and packing.  We view that as flow correct?  Well I'd like to say yes this is flow but there are many more components to it, such as the purchase individual who orders steel, the CSR who inputs the orders, the shop floor guys and gals whom I supervise that can improve the flow, the drivers who deliver the product etc....  This flow bussiness can and is extremely involved.

The aspect of flow I'll address today is on the shop floor.  When my turret guys need steel to punch for sequenced shop orders the material handler brings them the steel and stages it on roller flow track.  This had worked well for us in the past yet there were and are periods of downtime  This puzzled me and posed a problem.  What did we do to fix this?

The first thing I did was GO TO GEMBA.  Yes, that is right I left my desk and went to GEMBA.  You know the place on the shop floor where the work takes place?  Where you are able to ask the questions to the guys and gals doing the work who may have a better way.  The place where one can observe the bottleneck, safety hazard, improvement opportunity, etc.  Yes, GEMBA.  I'll fully admit that was a gig at suits who fail to goto the shop floor yet purport they understand Lean and Lean methodology while directing from a desk high in the sky.

When going to Gemba I found a few things.  There was an absence of visual management of the shop order.  I didn't have a vertical file, nor an andon *flag device denoting status of need with material handler*, guess who came up with the vertical file idea?  You've got that right buckaroos, the brilliant minds that work for me.  They are the ones who drove the solutions to our problem of proper flow.  It wasn't my divine insight or cowboy swagger.  It was and is the people who work for you that will more than likely drive improvement if you know how to ask the right questions and afford them time.
Do you see a pattern here in my blog postings, People/Process/Culture.  The key elements in securing a foundation for a Lean culture, as my team and I are doing.

After implementing the andon and vertical file, we decided that a better roller track system of flat stock steel that was better able to support the higher volume of through put we were getting.  With greater through one has a need to maximize capacity and reduce downtime.  That birthed more roller track that helped the material handler pick up processed parts and deliver them to the next operation.  Once again, a Lean culture is a learning culture and we are recognizing the benefits of Lean.

In closing this post of flow, I'd like to ask you the audience a few questions.  What are you doing to actively engage your workforce as I'm doing?  What are you doing with the answers your workforce is giving you, i.e. is there any action being taking on the ideas and improvements you people are giving you?  What results are you seeing on your Lean journey and are you recording them with photographs?  I hear all sorts of individuals talk from a consultant level about the theory of Lean and this is great, what my team and I are doing is actually IMPLEMENTING LEAN and making manufacturing a more efficient and hospitable place to learn and practice the art and science of continuous improvement.

I'd like to thank you all for stopping by and reading this post.  With the holidays quickly approaching I'll have some time off the day job and may be doing some more postings as Yoda and I have house projects that we are going to complete.

Happy Trails...
-Cowboy