HomeValue stream mapping - pump on time delivery example
Background: A large international original equipment pump manufacturer with a plant in southern Ontario making a variety of engineered centrifugal and twin screw positive displacement pumps had a long term problem with on time delivery. In the 45 year history of the plant, pump timeliness averaged 35% and parts timeliness a somewhat better 55%. In the period 2005 to 2009 the world was undergoing a growth period which had resulted in corresponding growth in the raw material extraction industry. This translated into steadily increasing demand for capital equipment such as pumps. This plant had undergone a 24 month period of steady increase in its backlog and was facing increasing pressure from its customers to deliver.
The plant had a dual role in the corporate product supply chain acting as a regional warehouse for parts and also a manufacturing plant for pumps (see the above picture).
Analysis: Given that a pump is composed of parts, the collective consensus of the management team was to focus on the timeliness of parts assuming that the pump delivery problem would take care of itself. Statistically if a pump is composed of 6 key parts and the average on time delivery of parts is 0.98, simple intuitive analysis suggests that pump timeliness cannot be better than 88% (0.98 raised to the exponent 6).
To put pressure on plant management world wide, the corporate office had made the improvement of on time delivery, part of the performance reward system. A benchmark of three days from receipt of order to part shipment had been ordained as the new minimum standard. Coincident with this mandate, a corporate trainer was making the rounds of all manufacturing plants to teach the subject of lean process mapping. The problem of "on time parts delivery" was selected by the management team for the mapping process in this training session.
Over a four day period, the process of making key pump components was thoroughly mapped on kraft paper posted on the wall of length 30 feet. Out of this process half a dozen black belt projects, and several other yellow and green belt projects were identified as items to fix in order to achieve a more streamlined and timely process.
Collectively as a management group we felt very satisfied with the improved understanding of the problem. However, given that a black belt project takes a minimum of six months to complete and document, we felt that this was too long a timeline to be satisfactory.
The next morning, the chief scheduler for the site, met with the manufacturing manager (Burns Bridge's principal). The idea of doing all of the "belt" projects was discarded as being completely unnecessary. Instead, the planner had identified three key things for the shop to do. Further, all three of these items were of an operational nature and within the control of shop supervision.
The planner requested an all supervisors meeting. Subsequently, the three operational improvements were outlined in detail, together with what it was thought, was needed from the supervisors to deliver on each improvement.
Outcome: Within two weeks, the shipping of parts rose to 90% on time. Within a month, the parts delivery metric had increased to 95%. To support this metric the manufacturing management group undertook the following initiatives:
Develop a local outside machining source for every component.
Undertake a project to reduce machining time on twin flight screws by over 80%.
Undertake a project to reduce cost of quality from 6% to under 1% of sales.
Undertake a project to identify and rectify all internal causes of mechanical seal failure.
