In the electronics manufacturing service sector, lean manufacturing is a relatively recent advance. In a case study describing the production of electronic test equipment, this meant transforming from a traditional batch-and-queue circuit board assembly process to a continuous flow manufacturing process.
One dramatic example of the waste uncovered in production line involved the process for kitting all of components for the 163 possible equipment variations. Many of the parts for a particular variation were only occasionally used, resulting in a scenario where only 102 of the 163 variations were actually built within a six month period. This led to incomplete kits remaining in the staging area, generating idle time, while the program manager waited for delivery of missing components.
At one point nearly $800,000 worth of inventory sat in raw materials. Other times, the program manager released incomplete kits to the production floor, expecting a supplier to deliver as promised. Unfortunately the parts did not arrive on time and circuit card assemblies sat unfinished on the line, creating another choke point of accumulating inventory. This resulted in extra trips from the staging area to the line - all instances of wasted time and money.
The initial mandate needed to stop this folly was the implementation of a simple rule that the program manager will release a build work-order only when the kits are complete and ready for staging. After this, additional equipment was acquired to convert the manufacturing line to a pull-based continuous flow process with a high sensitivity to overproduction.
The initial deployment of the lean manufacturing model reduced WIP from $1.9 million to $0.38 million and cut the manufacturing cycle time from eighteen (18) days to three (3) days. Quality yields increased from 83.9% to 99.7%.
Implementation Kaizen and Six Sigma
Most of equipment found in a process plant must produce a variety of materials in a relatively short time. In some cases, the changeover form one product to the next is fast and inexpensive. In other cases, the change-over can be long and costly, this will drive long production schedule campaign to minimize the overall transition cost.
The above represent the basic Lean Principles most often used to transform a manufacturing shop floor and/or supporting departments. Applying lean principles is a slow, methodical, never-ending process. We frequently refer to launching a lean program as a "journey that never ends." Perhaps that is why we must embrace the mind set of continuous improvement, never being satisfied with our current state.
Kaizen events are an excellent way to improve manufacturing process and work practices. The kaizen team includes the people who do the work every day, so that hands-on operational experience is incorporated into proposed solutions. Although kaizen events are completed quickly usually within a few days, the process includes implementing and testing the improvement, so results are seen quickly. By involving the workforce in these short, focused improvement activities, the organization moves toward a culture of continuous incremental improvement.
In electronic manufacturing, the best used in six sigma is a level of quality equal to 3.4 defects per million opportunities. The term was made popular by Motorola in the mid-to-late 1980s. For the past 20 years, companies have launched a variety of quality improvement initiatives to eliminate process variation, and to build the "perfect process" that produces the "perfect product."
By using DMAIC framework will increase significantly the successful outcome, and will not slow down the process. Experience show that kaizen event managed as six sigma projects are more successful and have a far greater likelihood of being sustained.
How to use 5S for better environmental manufacturing
For lean operations to be most effective, they should be managed at the location where the work is done. To facilitate management, process areas need to be clean and well organized through the use of tools like 5S. This means keeping the area well marked and the equipment visually identified.
When done well, 5S becomes the foundation for all visual management practices for such area are more clutter free, the flow are more visible and the issues and problem are more obvious. This is because workplace safety is often key reason for instituting a 5S program, with the understanding that a highly visual, clutter-free workplace is generally much safer.
Using TPM of reducing production cost
Asset productivity is far more important to the effectiveness of a process plant than s labor productivity. Therefore, the process industries have an even greater need to do everything within reason to improve the reliability and uptime of the equipment and thus a greater need for the benefits that TPM can bring.
One of the most widespread measures used to gauge the effectiveness of a TPM effort is OEE. One reason for its popularity is that it captures in a single metric all the factors that detract from optimum equipment performance.
The set of measuring and practices that have proven to be effective in improving maintenance and more importantly, improving overall equipment effectiveness OEE performance. TPM is a process that involves all levels of the organization in the total maintaining in the total maintaining process and puts direct responsibility for much of the maintenance work in the hands of those closest to the equipment that is operators.
TPM should be a key part of electronic manufacturing primary effort because it can reduce the several forms of waste associated with poor equipment performance, overproduction, inventory, defects, transportation and waiting.
Experience on Internship
From my individual experience on internship before. I have been placed in electronic multinational company in Penang, the company is Jabil Circuit it is an U.S based company, is an electronics solutions company providing comprehensive electronics design, production and product management services to global electronics and technology companies. I have been placed in Lean department, working as programming analyst trainee.
Towards of continuous improvement
The main manufacturing on this company is on the production line that produce electronic board and parts assembly, this process operation, start with a small number of raw material, from which hundreds or thousands of final products are made. Before the final product been ship to the customers, a full quality test need to be process on each final product that been made. This test is to finalize the quality of the product, if the product is found defected, a numerous step of repair process been proceed.
This company is undergoing tremendous changes on the entire process of manufacturing. Their focus is to eliminate all waste, added value for employees, continuous improvement, and perfect quality. The target is to make the manufacturing operations to run much more efficiently if production is done at uniform level. This tends to maximize equipment productivity and labor productivity, and smooth out the requirement for raw materials and support facilities.
To make this happen a department that specialize on leading the company towards lean advancement been establish, this department it's not new, but reformat the department for the continuous improvement needs.
Every month there will be a Kaizen events that itself promoting high-energy to all workers, this attract engineers on every department to participated. The event itself is actually a competition, the winner that is first place will bring home cash of money about RM1000, the second place is RM800, the third place is RM500 and the rest who participate will got certificate with shopping vouchers.
The competition is open to all worker in this company whether he/she is an line engineers, technician, IT administration, HR, finance, logistic, or he/she is a manager itself can submit their project submission if they have improvement project that is to make the process to be better, to improve what its already there, to reduce wastes on manufacturing and much more. The criteria for every submission is the project must be useful, do not involving cost that burden to department, the project must be related to department. Usually more than 70 projects submission in every month, only 15 selected projects will be brought to the board. The 15 finalist will need to give a short presentation to director of board about their project to convince that their project is the best continuous improvement projects from all the project that been submitted.
Kaizen is one of the Jabil Continuous Improvement strategy to cultivate the culture of employee in giving suggestion on improvement at their workplace for the betterment of company. Actually there is lots more lean principles been apply on this company, from 5S that transform all parts of department to more visual management, Six Sigma Champions program that is the highest competition on this company and many more, the six sigma champions program almost same like the Kaizen competition but the project its more large scale and the finalist will be compete with other finalist from other plants in regional and lastly compete with the global team.
Applying Lean Principle to the best
My task in this department is working as technical advisor to making software's that are related on lean tools and integrate then it to the machine throughout the whole Jabil plants in Penang.
