Manufacturing company in Dublin

ABOUT THIS ORGANISATION.

Not all of our clients wish to be identified. Some wish to remain anonymous sometimes to retain an edge over a competitor. That is understandable and never an issue for us to accommodate. If and when discretion is called for, we work with the client to keep the project under wraps, providing advice and guidance on how best to do so.

The Challenge.

This manufacturing company has a production workshop manufacturing parts on a number of CNC machines. These parts are then used in the assembly department.
The company predominantly works on Day shift, 5 days per week.
Machine efficiency levels were low in the workshop which resulted in the company needing to subcontract the manufacture of parts to avoid delays in product build in Assembly

A Collaborative Solution.

Working with Production and with Process Engineering, we first set up a PIT process to monitor and visualise the results in the Workshop.
OEE2 was selected as the key performance indicator on the line. It was clear that an opportunity existed to improve the Line OEE2 results.
An A3/DMAIC problem solving project was started with the team. Results were measured and the baseline OEE2 was measured before the improvement program began.
We worked with the operators and with Manufacturing engineering to identify the main losses. The main loss was associated with the time taken to changeover the machines from 1 product to another.
The team were trained in SMED techniques and then we started work in analysing and reducing the changeover time. It was discovered that a lot of machine downtime was caused by manual deburring and final touching up of finished parts.
This work was moved to a dedicated Finishing Operator to enable all CNC machines to start producing the next parts as quickly as possible. Progress was monitored daily at the PIT meetings.

Impact and Results.

Production Productivity was improved by over 100% in the first 4 months and production volumes increased to reduce the need for subcontracting.
Savings of more than €250k pa were realised by the team. Capability was built within the team to enable them to do further problem solving, and a new target was agreed to improve OEE2 in the department by a further 20% in the following months.