They needed to level load the facility.īecause the facility shipped $250 million of product per year, it became a simple step to determine that they needed to ship $1 million per day, and when the general manager stated that would be the first step on their lean journey, the local leadership clearly did not believe that this simple approach could solve a lot of their problems. We quickly realized that the facility did not need to the millions of dollars in test equipment. It was unmitigated chaos – and more importantly, the local leadership wanted us to see how hard they work working in this chaos. The general manager of the business and I flew out there to spend the last five days of a quarter to begin to understand personally what was going on in the facility.
Not enough final test equipment capacity (the test equipment sat idle the first three weeks of the month, but local leadership was asking for millions of dollars in additional final test equipment).Scheduling issues with client inspections.Repeated shipping targets were missed for the following reasons: More than 80% of all its products were shipped out in the last three days of each month. This facility panics at the end of every year, every quarter, and every month. We have a client that ships valves to the oil and gas industry in Asia. If the first two approaches are not working, and there is continued resistance to the lean manufacturing transformation, these managers may have to be replaced. Some managers have great difficulty moving from an end-of-period crisis style of management to a more planned level loaded style of management required in a lean manufacturing transformation.Change the metrics of the key operations leaders most responsible for implementing load leveling in their production facility - metrics drive change.Follow up on those corrective actions every Monday. Discuss specific corrective actions that need to be taken if the targets were missed. For example – if the business is trying to move from a quarter shipping period to a weekly shipping period, schedule quick reviews every Monday morning. Schedule lean production reviews at the end of the new expected shipping period.
Here are three specific actions that we recommend to our clients to change this culture: While this sounds easy, leadership must recognize that there will probably be a deep cultural resistance to level loading versus end-of-period crisis management. Ultimately, the goal becomes a steady pace (Toyota uses takt time to describe this) moving toward one-piece flow. Understanding your business’ operational shipping peaks, and then developing a plan to address smoothing these peaks through level loading is often the first successful step in implementing a lean manufacturing transformation.
#SIGMA CLIENT LOADING TIME HOW TO#
Beginning the Journey – How To Get Started With Lean Level Loadingīegin your lean operations journey by looking at the shipping volume or dollars shipped every day in your business over a one-year period. It was vital to the development of production efficiency in the Toyota Production System and lean manufacturing. It is a technique for reducing the unevenness in operation which in turn reduces waste. Level loading is often called production leveling, or production smoothing. Level loading your factory is exactly the opposite of this mentality - let’s produce the same every day, and even every hour, more in line with customer demand! The Definition of Level Loading In Lean Manufacturingīut first, let’s describe what we mean by level loading. Most factories are driven to perform by some internally focused deadline - get all of your production out by the end of the year, or by the end of the quarter, by the end of the month (this is what we see the most), or even by the end of each week. Level Loading Your Factory Can Dramatically Improve Performance
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