As a part of improving productivity, one of the leading flexible packaging manufacturers was very keen in increasing capacity intheir plant and wanted to reduce overall operating cost in their existing facility. Since they are piled up with order, the main challenge was to do the project without disturbing their production time. To determine where to focus its efforts, the company wanted a solution in minimum possible time and achieved beyond its expectation.
Greenmile proposed a five day intervention program in studying and analyzing the process,
Team began by mapping the production process, with the idea of developing an extensive view on what the company was trying to achieve on each process step. The data collection was done on gemba basis. The team worked on identifying the capacities, waiting time and process duration at each step, understanding the relationships between the steps, and hypothesizing about bottlenecks and other sources of waste in the process.
Greenmile’s team proposed the SMED technique of lean manufacturing in saving Set-Up time of a printing machine after understanding the pain point. Following details give the before and After Condition of the set-up time.
For one station (based on the shop floor observation of a Printing Machine)
- Washing of old cylinder – 5 minutes
- Cleaning of ink tray and container – 2 hours
- Removal of insulation tape from the shaft- 3.1 minutes
- Detaching the cylinder with shaft from the station and removing the shaft from the cylinder- 5.50 min
- Attaching the shaft to new cylinder and placing it to the station- 4.1 minutes
- Cleaning of outlet pipe of the container- 3 minutes
- Taping the sides of the shaft- 0.30 minutes
- Placing cleaned container with tray to the station – 1.2 minutes
- Filling the container – 1.2 minute
- Adjusting height of the tray – 0.75 minutes
- Blade change – 3 minutes
For 8 such station (excluding ink tray, container cleaning, blade change) = 21.25 X 8 = 180.4 minutes = 3.006 hours.
Here all the above jobs are done only after stopping the machine. Some of this jobs can be converted to external jobs (i.e. no need to stop the machine) .
BEFORE
AFTER IMPLEMENTATION
Factors which were internal, after implementation that changed to external
- Cylinder-shaft fixing 9.6 min
- Additional Container, tray moving
Total Time = 9.6+2 = 11.6 minutes
For 8 such stations = 11.6*8 = 92.8 minutes = 1.54 hours.
RESULT: By acquiring spare shaft, spare ink trays and containers, the organization reduced their setting time from 3 hours to 1.54 hours.
The cost associated
The team identified cost at each major process step with the guidance from costing department. The equipment, operator-labor rates, capacity utilization was analyzed .The team could see the reduction in wastages and visualized improved performance on the cost savings with immediate effect.
Benefits
The study has benefited the organization to increase capacity with the existing facility without making any infrastructure improvements.
The company has achieved
- Reduction in set-up time at printing stage from 3 hours to 1.54 hours (through Single Minute Exchange of Dies- SMED technique)
- 29% increase in printing capacity. (@ 3 change overs/day)
- 23% reduction in manufacturing cost.
© Greenmile.
At Greenmile, We are committed to provide solutions for organizations in achieving excellence in every business process. We are passionate in networking with diverse industry professionals and utilizing their expertise in bringing excellence. Our highly energetic strategic team has professionals having decades of experience in Chemical, Pharma, FMCG, Automotive, Oil & Gas, IT and ITES. Also our network has access to numerous functional experts. This model works very effectively for us to provide cost effective solutions for any kind of challenges faced in business.