Chevy Volt - future GM failure

[TLyttle]

Gene, can you give me a thumbnail sketch of "lean manufacture"? I'm not familiar with the process, not by that name at least...

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by TLyttle

Gene, can you give me a thumbnail sketch of "lean manufacture"? I'm not familiar with the process, not by that name at least...

I'm told that it has other titles so it may be familiar to you....

The basic idea of Lean is to reduce waste or "non-value added effort" in the entire workplace. Each individual is recruited as part of the effort and is responsible for keeping things orderly and efficient within their areas of operation.

The workplace is first organized according to something called "5S". I don't recall the Japanese terms but the English terms are...

1. Sort - Go through stuff and toss out or put into storage things that you do not need within a certain time frame (we usually worked around a month at one place, where I work now it's about two weeks). This includes tools and materials. You ever heard of "red tag"? People will red tag an item. It is put into a "red tag area" This is where stuff that is not needed gets dropped until someone can either justify it being there, can dispose of it or find a place for it (a home). This process is really dicey, in that if someone isn't communicating or aware stuff can get lost and when needed can create emergencies.

2. Set in Order - what you have in your work place is put into order so that you can find it and put it in your hand within thirty seconds. My toolbox at work is what I call an "organized mess". Each drawer is labeled so that others can get things if they need them, but the drawers are trashed to some degree. Every week I take some time to toss the junk. At the end of the day I will put things where they belong.

3. Shine - Keep the place clean. Every 5S place I ever worked in allowed for a small period of time to clean up. There is also "clean as you go" which is more efficient.

4. Standardize - everyone knows their part. There is to some degree consistent types of organization, such as shadowboards and other tricks.

5. Sustain - You have to keep on top of this stuff. Otherwise it's "spring cleaning" which is good but not good enough.

Lean takes this further along. The whole organization steamlines itself so that it takes in what it needs to work within a certain time frame, processes it efficiently and puts it out the door. The idea is to change your organization into a pipeline, where raw materials come in and stuff goes out. This is an ideal or goal, one that you never quite reach. Compromise is the stuff of reality. Batch sizes are reduced downwards, ideally to one item, and people work closely together through the production process so that mistakes are caught fast and corrected fast.

The "work cell" is a variation of assembly line that is organized into a "U" shape, so that people can watch one another and discover mistakes or bottlenecks rapidly.

Quality is "built" in from the get go by reducing "process variation" where it matters. Process is how stuff is made and variation is how stuff deviates from some idea or good standard. Sometimes it's really difficult to discover where to tighten things up and where to let them relax. I have some theory on methods that discover this but most of the time that's a job for engineers, though I've been known to pull them aside and point something out.

There is an idea of "pull". The originators of Lean got this idea from visiting a US supermarket. You know those racks that Soda sit in? As you take one out another one slides into place. A clerk will go around to see what is low and order more. Pull was how the organization made things. The customer (or business partner) generates orders, and each part of the organization makes what is needed when it's needed.

When I worked in consumer electronics we worked around orders from customers. These orders generated "Demand" which was satisfied during our shift. I was a "line tech", my job was to take stuff which was made slightly wrong, get it fixed fast and put it back onto the line. While I was fixing it the line coordinators were recording what went wrong and were finding out if it was caused by a bad part or someone having problems, or someone being a jerk or being stoned (our quality used to slide after lunch, and during lunch some people would smoke up). Over time the problems were straightened out.

In most industries it's more "push", what the shift can produce in a given period of time. You get more you have to take it rather than say "hey! No more for this shift". That is unless you had quotas, which are fine but if people aren't busy working on something that is a waste of sorts.

Bottlenecks restrict how fast something can be made.

In Lean people are "cross trained" so that they can jump in and help out to help get the pull properly done in the least amount of time. People go to where the bottlenecks are and reduce them or pull product through them. Kind of like a utility man except that many more people are utility people.

The more places you can fit in the more valuable you are to the company since you can eliminate more bottlenecks. In case anyone cares some Unions are starting to work with Lean Manufacturing and will change how they address work rules and other stuff. Too bad that the UAW, at least so far, has been somewhat resistant to this idea. Of course GM management is probably not cool with "worker empowerment" either and Lean is impossible if the workers cannot control things that are not normally controlled in US operations.

Toyota uses this method to make cars. Naturally it's not perfect. "Just in Time" is an ideal, and I think it's been abused by some folks.

There is a huge amount of communication needed to make this system work. It puts a lot of power into the hands of workers, who must police their own ranks and make sure t hat they're doing their jobs properly. Since quality is part of their job they're able to stop the process. Toyota has a signaling device that stops the line or Work Cell, and it is expected that you'll stop the line. Toyota also expects workers to submit 26 suggestions per year, or one every two weeks.

Managers have to coordinate stuff, insure that vendors get things there on time, and hash out stuff with customers. They get more of some headaches, fewer of others.

I've worked in two Lean operations - one was a consumer electronics manufacturer, the other was a research lab. The lab was different and I've never seen anything before or since like it, but I try to work at home this way.

I'm sure I've missed some points but I think I've put most of it down here. My experience was more of a worker than a planner or teacher.

Gene