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Object: Managers and supervisors of manufacturing shops
Object number: 20-25 people (All need to participate because this is an interactive lecture )
language: English
Course duration: 8 hours (two hours*4 times)
Shunsuke Tsuda is a Japanese professional. He after graduating from Waseda University of Japan in Mechanical Engineering joined M/s Hitachi, Ltd. in 1973. He started his career in Hitachi, Ltd. as an engineer of Production Engineering in Automotive Components Division. He was engaged in constructing and promoting seven overseas production facilities in countries like USA, China, Thailand, UK, Germany etc. for his company during 1985 to 2007 up till his retirement as Sr. General Manager of Hitachi India Ltd. During his nearly four decades of continuous association with Hitachi, he implemented business process re-engineering as per the principles of lean manufacturing in 8 overseas plants of Automotive Components Division of Hitachi, Ltd. After his retirement from Hitachi, Ltd, he had worked in an Indian manufacturing company and later on experienced more than twelve Indian manufacturing companies. He worked in automotive car makers, automotive product makers, electrical device makers, machine makers, logistic company etc.as a Lean Manufacturing Consultant during his 8 year-stay in India. Now he is managing director of ST Associates, Ltd. Japan.
His method of the lean manufacturing consultancy is based upon TPS (Toyota Production System). It is a system that a lot of the manufacturing managers including top management personnel both in Japan as well as in overseas are eager to learn and practice along the side of TPM.
He is keener to focus on how to implement TPS. He insists that how to adapt TPS to the local culture is more important rather than simply gaining knowledge about the technical methods. To make this point clear to the professional world, he has written a book with title, “It is now for you to change for development of Indian industry.”
Let's try a new mind-set! We must always have a spirit of having a higher ambition. The most important thing about acquiring such a spirit and enthusiasm is that we should never be satisfied with the current situation of whatever we are doing. A question we must ask ourselves to test our zeal is, "Am I satisfied now?" The usual answer could be, "Yes, I am. Because, I am working for a company with sufficient salary and I am happy with my family." What is the true meaning of such a feeling? It may appear okay to feel good and satisfied with what we may be having. But such a mental state may not provide necessary inspiration to aim anything bigger than the current state! Thus, any person should aspire to improve in his or her ability and the environment or the current state. But we must remember the saying that, “no pain, no gain, no improvement”. Therefore, a person can improve only by overcoming the pain. If you are satisfied with the current state, it becomes difficult for you to improve. Therefore, what you need is to deny yourself of the present state you are living in. You may well deny your workplace. First of all, in TPS, you begin with self-denial and the denial of the workplace. In order to do this, you practice "Join in chorus" seeing the examples on Video.
After awareness revolution, you start 5S. You must realize that 5S is the basic for everything. 5S is explained through interpretation of Japanese language character. It’s directly linked to PDCA. In TPM, it’s a well-known fact that "Cleaning is an inspection". Also, there is a famous quote by Henry Ford, “The first job was to clean up.” We will discuss about 5S through videos, photos through a PPT document. The presentation encompasses various themes like "Cleaning is a technology", "Cleaning is inspection", "Untidy warehouse" and "Poor parts supply". What would happen in an untidy workplace? Often, there could be found managers who regard 5S activity as a whole house cleaning once in a while. 5S doesn't mean so. Making a culture that values the basis of work always makes competitive edge. The concept of TPS is based on the concept of PDCA. And 5S promotes the same idea.
We can find a lot of examples of waste in various texts on 7 wastes of TPS, 7 losses of TPM and the motion economy. For the purpose of better understanding, you should try to find wastes in photos of some typical examples of bad situations. You should discuss about where wastes are existing seeing a video of a manufacturing line. You may also discuss about wastes that may be lying hidden in an office and in the office work. Two photos of "Riders" are shown for discussion. A rider carefully goes over the bridge that looks extremely dangerous in one photograph. In the other photo, one rider is running calmly on the wide road. You will learn that a danger is hiding in the driving on the wide road.
Why is the overproduction thought as a waste? It is a concept of "promise". Here D of PDCA doesn't follow P, a clear violation of the rule. Overproduction gives birth to an extra stock. In a word, the violation of the rule makes wastes and overproduction means overcapacity.
It is wasteful to have nothing to do. Let's think of what kinds of feelings you may have if someone keeps you waiting. Consider a situation that you have no parts to assemble. Sometimes, you must wait because the following process is producing another product. You must wait because there is lack of balancing between processes. Having waste of waiting lengthens the lead time. On the other hand, waiting for someone at the meeting is a great waste of office work.
Although transportation makes an additional value in a logistic company, it is a waste to carry something in a factory or an office. It never makes any additional value. Kaizen can be undertaken comparatively easily because the waste is very clear in such a case. What is the problem is that the managers often do not recognize this as a waste! They tend to feel such a waste doesn't have any influence to the management of the company.
Anyone can understand that a defect is a waste. There are a lot of managers who think it acceptable if the defect is repairable or reworkable. Neither an extra material, nor an extra energy, nor an extra work would be generated if the defects do not occur.
If you have enough stocks, you need not worry even if there is a trouble in the next process. If you don't have enough stocks, you need to fix immediately the machine trouble to prevent any trouble in the next process. Otherwise, if you don't have enough stocks, you may cause the next process to suffer when there is a quality problem in your process. Therefore, you have to have enough stocks to manage such a situation. This is usual thinking! You don't care about minor troubles of equipment because you have enough stocks. You don't care about minor troubles of quality because you have enough stocks. In other words, the problems concerning equipment and quality are hardly inquired into the primary cause.
As there is a saying called "Motion economy". This implies that we must deploy the most efficient motion to achieve any particular purpose. It looks like the reason behind such thinking is “A straight line is the shortest to connect two different points”. There must be a way to perform an activity at the shortest possible time. There must be a way that would reduce worker's fatigue. Therefore, it is considered that worker's movement is a waste. Motion is divided into three kinds:
1) Motion making additional value to achieve the purpose (Work).
2) Motion necessary for No.1 despite no additional value.
3) Motion without any meaning.
As the "process itself" makes an additional value, thinking it a waste is wrong, isn't it? It might certainly be so for the present. However, the current work process may not be the best and might be able to be improved. The competitor might have already considered it. If you think the process itself as a waste, there is a high possibility of a new technology to be born
Let's think how to advance Kaizen in the next session.
Some examples are shown in Video
A lot of managers of companies give up TPS on the halfway after they started its introduction. What could be the reason(s) for it? You can hardly see or visualize easily a significant improvement in management indices even though you might have spent much money by appointing a consultant. So, you give up finally. The systematic leadership of top management is important to change the culture of the company such as the introduction of TPS and so on. Moreover, you should consider that there are two patterns of productivity enhancement. One, you can get results in a short time, and the other one, you need some time to get results.
Inventory reduction and defect reduction can make the management indices improve obviously. The inventory reduction can be shown in BS.
Reduction of defects
The reduction of defects causes to reduce wasteful labor cost and material cost associated with creation of the defects. When the material and labor cost doesn't decrease in spite of defects reduction, you should consider there may be other factor (s) existing.
Inventory reduction
You should pursue for proper stock. You should check the amount of stock of high-sales volume items. You should check how many and how, parts, works in progress and finish products are stored. There may be issue of quantity control. So, you should check how much gap you have between the actual inventory and the data in the computer (system). You should check the lowest stock level (safety stock) during the previous one year. You should reconstruct the inventory control system considering whether it is possible to reduce the level of the minimum stock of various items.
Pursuit of defects
About quality matter, you should organize cross-functional teams to solve. You should not just leave it to each worker in charge. When a trouble happens, the line should be stopped and the team is sent to the site immediately to attend it. They should investigate and identify the route cause(s) and then, put in place the urgent counteraction. Pokayoke is often used to prevent defects from happening.
Improvement of productivity in each line
You can improve line-balance, small tools, layout, lot-size, set-up time and autonomation with comparatively less money. However, change of the process often requires a lot of investment. Furthermore, you need to confirm whether it can work out or not. As you can gain the results by other countermeasures a lot, you should better concentrate on reduction of wastes rather than the change of the process. However, in case you try to pursue a long-term result, you should clearly define the target. You need the flexibility so that you can arrange or deploy workers according to the production volume. If you don't have any flexibility of worker's arrangement to the volume, it means a major weakness in the production management system. The flexible manpower needs multi-skilled workers. For this, you need a systematic education plan of workers. As for the education, it is important how to educate in shorter time period. Thus, the education method using IT can play a vital role.
Lead time shortening
The lead time must be shortened to reduce the stocks of parts, works in progress and finish products. The lot style operation is converted to single part flow style, as much as possible. The lot size should be minimized by shortening set-up time of the process needing the lot operation. The leveled production is done by the tact time production. The line stop is decreased by enhancing the equipment maintenance
Utilization of Kanban
In TPS, production instructed by Kanban is done as an efficient method instead of passing instruction by a central production management. The mechanism of Kanban and its challenges would be discussed.
Kinds of production in the assembly lines and the feature
The line style is decided considering how to avoid waste of transportation and waiting. The cell system is very effective to meet such objectives. The features and problems associated would be discussed. Recommendation of “Chak-Chak” is made in this regard.
Reduction of set-up time
The reduction of set-up time is essential to reduce the lot size. A comparison has been made with the pit stop such as F1 (Formula 1 race). If the set-up hour is fixed, you can use a taskforce like a fire-brigade.
Reduction of one-man work and decrease of workers
Unless one-man work is eliminated to enhance the productivity, you can't decrease the number of workers. Reduction of one-man work or a cell production system is required to enhance the productivity of the line. Now that you have made the reduction of one-man work, let's think about who are the workers should be pulled out from the line.
Pokayoke and the problem of Pokayoke
Pokayoke is a very useful tool to prevent defects from happening. However, it is just a tool. It doesn't carry out its function on a wrong way. We would discuss about an accident of an aircraft.
Equipment maintenance
The effort to decrease the line stop by the equipment failure as much as possible is made. We would discuss about various kinds of the equipment failures. A lot of it can be prevented by daily effort and by the positive research. There may be some failures for which you are likely to make little of
We discuss about the ideal image of a mass production factory.
Sales should be always growing in the business. A company whose sales don't grow comes under pressure to reduce the workforce even if the productivity is improved. But such a company can't accomplish its original goal and purpose. As the purpose of the enterprise is originally the pursuit of employees' happiness and contribution to the society, it is meaningless to lay off the employees for the cost cutting. The sales are always growing means that you can expand the share in the market. This becomes possible when there is continuous effort for the price competitiveness by undertaking cost reduction as part of system.
In business, the investment for equipment and education (expense) is necessary. Regarding the investment for equipment, you should be very careful to examine the plan, because you spend a lot of money. What you have to keep in mind in particular is that you must not have the capacity more than the necessity. If you go for more capacity than necessity, you are likely to make waste of overproduction. You should try to build the equipment in-house as much as possible.
It is impossible to keep zero stock in actually operation though in TPS, inventory is assumed as a waste. In fact, Toyota considers “Inventory is Devil!” This is because it conceals problems. The nearer to zero inventory is better. But the volume of inventories can't be decided only by manufacturing division and the warehouse. The most important factor is that you can make the inventory near zero by going for a leveled production between the processes. Information from the sales and marketing division becomes extremely important for this to happen. The stock never decreases if the sales and marketing division makes a sudden request for production changes. A great effort is required to ensure that the information from market is realistic without any unnecessary jerks or hypes! This can only be possible by a strong leadership of top management.
Another important aspect is: “How is the talent promotion plan made?” An excellent company in Japan doesn't dismiss any workers those become redundant and hence, are pulled out as a result of the productivity enhancement. The worker who should be withdrawn from the line because of the reduction of one-man is another question. He or she should be the one who is the best worker, not the most inferior one! The idea behind this is that the most inferior worker doesn't need to give up his possibility of improvement. Also, the best worker who leaves the line will have a chance to challenge for more value-added work. As a matter of course, he can support production when the production volume is high. Flexible manpower is needed when there is strong possibility of the change in the production volume. For this, the plan for promoting multi-skilling among the workers becomes important.
The production plan should be nearly the same every day. The plan should remain unchanged at least for a week by exchanging information between market division and manufacturing division. This means the production volume should be the same every day during the week. The production instruction is made by Kanban system based on the later process withdrawal, not by central administration system.
When there is any problem happens to the line or equipment, production is immediately discontinued. This is done based on the idea of autonomation. The worker is empowered to voluntarily stop the line. Or, the machine automatically stops by sensing any abnormality. There is visual control like Andon through which information of any such line or machine stoppage becomes visible. This helps the concerned person or agency to rush to Gemba immediately. Thus, the problem is solved without any delay. Also, action is taken to prevent any relapse of the problem.
In Toyota, the production plan is stabilized and the Kanban system is working up to its full potential due to the stability of the production plan. The inventory is intentionally reduced. The worker has been given a right to stop the line. These make workers to operate in a very tight situation. This leads the workers having ability to pick up problems in operation. They also become competent on how to solve the problems on long-term basis. As a result of such a mind-set, the company can always expand sales and profit and it can contribute to the happiness of employees and society.
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