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(+)+(+) The Lean Changeover e-letter
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(+)+(+) Published monthly by Changeover.com
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(+)+(+) Written by John R Henry, CPP
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### JUNE 2006
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PAckExpo will be taking place in Chicago from Sunday, October 29 to Thursday, November 2. If you are not planning on going, you should. It is the premier show at which you can see all the new as well as classic packaging and automation technologies.
And,
As long as you are there, you should learn about changeover. On Friday I will be presenting my workshop “How to develop and implement a Lean Changeover program”. This full day program will give you all the tools you need to reduce changeover times in your plant. Topics covered will include:
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Every attendee will receive a certificate of achievement.
Attendees should include packaging managers and supervisors, production managers and supervisors, engineers, mechanics and anyone else with an interest in reducing downtime.
This workshop will also be of interest to machine designers and builders.
The workshop will be held in downtown Chicago.
The registration fee is $495. Multiple attendees from the same company may take a 15% discount.
For further details, please e-mail johnhenry@...
SOME THOUGHTS ON...
COPY EXACTLY!
I can’t believe that I had not run across this before but a friend sent me an article about a program that Intel has called “Copy EXACTLY!” (Note the punctuation). It was a newspaper article but it piqued my interest to do some further research. Copy EXACTLY! is the kind of program that I suspect that many of us have in the backs of our minds when developing new production lines but have not articulated.
Intel is constantly innovating new and/or improved products. Their process is that they develop the manufacturing process in their R&D or pilot manufacturing facility. Then, once they have worked the bugs out, they implement the process in a volume production facility or facilities. Anyone who has been involved in technology transfer knows what a difficult process it can be. It usually includes a lot of debugging with wasted time and wasted product.
Intel’s products, semi-conductor chips, are very expensive to waste. More importantly, they are also very time sensitive. Chips are constantly changing and often have a limited market life. It is critical to get a new chip into production and on the market as quickly as possible. Anything that can be done to reduce the startup time will have a powerful and positive impact on the bottom line.
Intel is not the only one who experiences this effect. A new pharmaceutical product may take years to develop and during that time, the patent clock is ticking. Once the clock runs out, competitive products will come on the market reducing the selling price. An additional 6 months gained at the start of the production process can be worth an enormous amount of money.
Other products will face similar if less severe pressures.
The problem Intel had found in the past is that in the process of transferring the product, a number of small changes would creep into the process. Each of these changes might seem insignificant by itself. Combined, they add up to major process differences between design and actual. The problem is magnified where a product is to be made in multiple plants. Differences between plants can cause variations within the, supposedly, same product. This variation, even if within specifications, can cause problems for the end customer.
These variations may occur in a variety of ways. Machine builders are continually upgrading their designs. A machine that is built for the volume production may include some improvements over the machine built previously for the pilot plant. These improvements may be justified but they do represent a difference in the process. Accommodating these differences may result in problems in scale-up. The gain from the improvement may not be worth the cost of accommodating a change.
Production equipment is not the only thing that can vary. Copy EXACTLY! requires that parameters such as utilities, building construction and any other variables be kept the same
Plants in different locations may have different environmental conditions. An example given in the article dealt with humidity. In the Portland Oregon pilot facility humidity was a problem so they dehumidified the air. When they scaled up in Arizona, they did not need to dehumidify. When yields were lower than expected, they found that the air was the culprit. The solution was to humidify the Arizona air and then dehumidify it.
The Copy EXACTLY! program realizes that it may not always be possible to exactly duplicate the pilot plant. When it is not possible to copy exactly, there is a procedure to justify and record variations. This recording of variations is a key part of the program. When a production facility gets different results from the pilot facility, it is possible to go back and see exactly what is different. These differences can then be isolated. Problems become much easier to track down.
There is a lot of good information on the web. Googling “Copy Exactly!”, using the quote marks, will turn up a number of papers and articles. A press release from Intel describing the program can be found at intel.com/pressroom/kits/manufacturing/copy_exactly_bkgrnd.htm Wired Magazine also has an interesting article at http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Technology&storyId=1530446
A more detailed paper on the process can be found at http://grace.wharton.upenn.edu/~terwiesch/p6.pdf
Subtle changes in processes are usually the most difficult to find. Copy EXACTLY! seems to be a good tool to prevent the changes as well as to identify them when they do occur.
TIP OF THE MONTH...
DISHWASHERS
Not long ago I was in a plant that had several Krones labelers using cold glue. When changing from one product to another, there are a number of components that need to be washed. In my experience this usually means loading all the parts on a cart, carrying them to a washroom, washing them in a sink and then bringing them back.
This plant had a great idea. They had purchased a standard dishwasher such as we might have in our homes. This was mounted under a workbench on each line within about 10 feet of the labeler. As the operator removed the parts, they placed them in the dishwasher. Detergent was added and a heavy duty wash cycle implemented. The cycle completed about the time they were ready for the parts.
I thought this was a great idea and it eliminated a lot of time and effort in the cleanup.
I have two additional comments:
My first impression was that a residential dishwasher might not stand up in an industrial environment. There are industrial washers available that might be more durable. On further thought, I figured, “So what?” The residential model is very compact compared to some of the industrial models I have seen. It is also pretty cheap, probably under $500, compared to 5-10 times that price for an industrial machine. If it needs to be replaced every 2 years, that is still a pretty small price to pay.
When observing the operator placing the parts in the machine, there was some trial and error needed to get everything to fit. My recommendation was to
1) Figure out the best position and photograph it. Laminate this and place it over the dishwasher for reference.
2) Modify the racks to make them more obvious and specific to the Krones parts. Apply the shadow board principle.
John R Henry CPP
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