Lean Case Study | E&I Engineering

Founded in 1987, E&I Engineering manufactures bespoke Electrical Switchgear (E&I Engineering Ltd) and Busbar Trunking Systems (Powerbar Ltd) for the building services sector. There is also a manufacturing facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to service the Middle East region, while the company has opened a facility in the USA to service the US market. Due to the significant growth in business, E&I saw that the current project management and production scheduling systems were too manual and cumbersome to allow for live and accurate information to be available. A significant overhaul was needed.

HOW WE IMPLEMENTED BETTER

Process Mapping was used to understand the end-to-end process, and to help identify different categories of projects/changes required in order to work towards a future state. A lead time profile by operation was identified for each category of project. In addition:

Online visual management was used to communicate and manage the process; to measure, display and act on data daily in order to highlight progress and issues.
Heijunka (level loading) techniques were used to develop scheduling process.
The Lean Principle of Pull System was applied to develop a backward scheduling process.
Daily PIT meetings were introduced to review performance to plan.

WHAT GOT BETTER?

Throughput	30%+ increase
Productivity	20%+ improvement

A fully functional scheduling process.

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