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If you work for a company that does any fabrication and has more than one hundred employees, then you have most surely heard of lean manufacturing.

I won’t give a full explanation for the unschooled, but here is a short description of lean manufacturing:

The main feature is the goal to eliminate all waste of any kind from every aspect of the business:
• customer relations
• product design
• supplier network
• factory management

The principles applied in a lean enterprise can be stated simply:
• Zero waiting time
• Zero Inventory
• Scheduling — internal customer pull instead of push system
• Batch to Flow — cut batch sizes
• Line Balancing
• Cut actual process times.

Once you have your employees on board and understanding lean principles, there are very few enemies left to overcome in a working lean manufacturing environment.

I have discovered two major enemies in our business to lean manufacturing.

We have some lines in our product stream that are very friendly to lean principles. They have very similar, repetitive assembly and processing functions.

One difficult fabrication area has two real problems.

1) Extreme Variation.
2) Short Runs.

Extreme variation is a problem in lean manufacturing because it is perhaps the anti-type to lean manufacturing principles. A well functioning lean product stream attempts to remove all variation. When this is impossible, the next step is to standardize the processing of the variation–effectively minimizing the negative impact of any variation that is inherent in the product. The variation in this fabrication area isn’t bad variation. I’m talking about the difference in one part from another, not poor designs or bad components.

This leads to the second problem, though part of the first problem. Our average production run in this problem area is less than ten units per run. We started trying to look for similar products on different work orders in an attempt to reduce the variation–treating them like a single run. We had very little success with this. Why?

1) Huge Product Line.
2) Extremely Short Lead Time.

The huge product offering keeps similar products separated more often than not.
The short lead time keeps us from being able to schedule similar products together. The first work order usually can’t wait for the similar product on another work order. One day turn around for custom built units happens every day.

We will not abandon continuing to make this better. In fact, we are far from exhausting this effort.

I think the next step for us in lean manufacturing for this problem area will be a heavy effort aimed at treating the processing of small runs like the product itself.

In other words, short runs have a bulk of the percentage of effort into getting them out the door wrapped up in their processing. A gain in cleaning up the processing is as good as a gain in fabrication in the net result.

Combined with this, I want to get standardized work and work stations established to the max in this area. We have had a very busy season that kept us from fully implementing all that we want.

Also, we still have a lot of material movement to streamline.

Lean Manufacturing is the only way to go. It is, however, quite challenging in some situations.

It will be interesting to see the hybrid approach these problems fashion over the next few years.

Maybe I’ll write the new version of lean manufacturing for the anti-widget industry someday.

Regards.

When I first started working where I have worked for eighteen years now, there was a guy running one of the departments that used to really bug me.

The business we are in has an extreme pressure for quick turn-around. We are often called upon to stretch our manufacturing capabilities as well as push the threshold for how we assemble and what materials we use and what, exactly, we can do with materials and processes.

Well, back when I first started, I was mister gun-ho. I was always running around getting extreme things done in departments that had said, “We can’t do it.” I received several awards in those days and moved up quickly.

Over the years, I continued to make it happen. I still make it happen all these years later.

However, these days, I often say, “We can’t do it.”

I keep waiting for some young gun-ho person to come along and make things happen I just said, “We can’t do.”

After a while, you get tired of the seventy hour weeks.

Now, I’m just like the guy that used to really bug me. It’s a shame. But, we have to find a comfortable place to live for the long haul. I wonder what cool thing or process hasn’t been developed because we want to go home and hug the kids?

It’s one of those ironies of necessity for living a real life. We have to give it up to have it.

In some ways, I still long for the days when I always thought I could fix this–this being the lumbering processes of a large fabrication facility.

I still can fix it. But, you know what I say instead?

“We can’t do it.”

Regards.

Most any of us that work in an office, manage a shop, run a business, or deal with co-workers in today’s world have grown accustomed to depending a great deal on our computers and email.

I remember the chuckle we had when our company was threatening to remove the privilege of email and internet from anyone who continued to abuse the privilege.

What a joke. They would take away the tool to perform the job they wanted us to do and leave us doing what, digging through and old Thomas Registry and snail mailing clients and vendors? It was rather laughable. Take the hammer from a carpenter and try to build a house.

Email has become an indispensable tool for many, if not most of us today.

Email is a love and hate relationship for me. I can’t work without it, but I can’t get much done because of it.

It really amounts to a tool that we need to learn to use all over again now that our world’s have sucked it in to the point that we use email rather than managing jobs, projects, and people.

OK, what do I mean by needing to learn to use email all over again? What do I mean by using email rather than managing jobs, projects, and people?

Well, how often do you dig through your sent box or archives? Only every day, right?

Why?

Sometimes it is for that tad bit of information you misplaced. Sometimes it is for that company name or email you need. But, I’ll bet you dig through it as often to prove you sent an email, or prove what someone actually emailed you!

That’s right. Email has become the ultimate ‘cover my butt’ tool in most work environments.

I work in a company with manufacturing facilities all over the country. We often have projects that have to be coordinated between facilities. It becomes an email quagmire.

There, that kind of rhymes, doesn’t it: Email Quagmire.

I have a friend who is an excellent example of those who avoid technology. Not because he is stupid, but because he doesn’t want to take the time to learn it. Yet he has become the Email King.

He hasn’t mastered storing and retrieving things, so he prints them. He will print an email and staple it to a work order and file it. For the information? NO. Because he needs it? NO.

He does it to cover his butt. It’s just to prove he told them to do it and what he said and when he said it.

So, this wonderful tool for communication has turned into management by proof of blame.

How do we fix it? I don’t know.

If you find out, send me an email.

Regards.

Yes, I must say, it was very nice to bond two pieces of plastic together and see the good bond we were always used to having.

What am I talking about.

IPS changed the mix in their methylene chloride. I’m not personally sure why. I was told it was because California law restricted their use of the trichlor they had been using.

Anyway, we had to search for a replacement to Weldon 3 and Weldon 4. We actually lost a lot of time and money over this–not to mention some mad customers. Don’t get me started on that. For this article, let me just say we only found out the formula was changed when it failed to perform as it had been.

So, for all you plastic fabricators, let me save you some time and effort. Mostly, just search for a supplier whose chemical manufacturing is not in California.

I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but Craftics Acrylic Cement methyl works for us like IPS Weldon used to. You’ll find them here.

You can thank me sometime when you get the chance.

Regards.