Shop Floor Problem Solving

Over the past few months, we've discussed leadership and what it should be doing to start and support a lean initiative in a stamping operation. You might be wondering, "When do we get the operators and supervisors involved with all this?" We should have been communicating to them about the Steering Committee planning and activities, of course, but it's true that we haven't really gotten them fully involved up to this point.

We need to get supervisors and operators involved in a disciplined approach to identifying and addressing problems. Further lean efforts will be founded upon the degree to which we have operational excellence in the shop. Inventories and costs will decrease to the extent that we can reduce downtime, scrap, delays, scheduling problems, die problems, and equipment problems. There is no value in value stream mapping and no good in pushing a pull system until we address those problems that will keep them from being effective.

A great place to begin our journey to operational excellence is implementing 5S, which we explored in great detail in "Starting Point" (The Skinny On Lean, May 2010). 5S addresses several components of good problem solving: It corrects many situations that operators and supervisors have lived with for so long that they've become nearly invisible, e.g., lost tools and supplies, problems with equipment, hard to read gages, dials, and controls, poor organization. 5S also gives you an opportunity to several visual factory methods that will help us.

First, you need to make certain that the metrics selected by the Steering Committee are posted throughout the shop in as many locations as are needed to assure that everyone can find and see them easily. You also need to have a commitment to keeping these metrics updated regularly. It might be weekly or monthly, even quarterly in some cases (although, if a metric is updated only quarterly, I would have some questions as to how important it really is), but when I see lean metrics that are six months old, I get a clear picture as to leadership's commitment to the process. That's the easy part.

A bit harder is the process of collecting real time information about problems as they arise at each press and operation. This takes attention and discipline by both operators and supervisors, but it is well worth the effort. You are going to use visual factory methods to gather this data, which means a visible chart or form of some sort is going to be posted near each targeted operation. It is difficult to provide a single chart that will work for every condition, but we'll show you the format created by one of our clients as an example and explain how it is used.

Their chart (see Figure 1) is made for each of ten presses. These charts are large (about 1.5 ft by 3 ft) and are posted weekly on a pegboard attached to the die cart next to each press. We told those operators that we want to be able to see the chart – and what they write on it – from 15 ft away. It is very important that the chart and its contents be highly visible.

In this plant, the operators stop to make one quality check each hour. During this check is the time when they fill out the chart. It is very important that any information gathering procedure you use be extremely "operator friendly". Asking them to record lots of numbers and statistics that are only of interest to upper management is not the way to go. Instead, think through any chart you ask the operators to use and get their input. The goal is not to gather every piece of data that you think might possibly be of interest sometime in the future. The goal is to provide a real time signal to operators and supervisors when problems occur that triggers them to address those problems in real time. My experience is that the first chart you put out will go through several revisions before you finally get something that works well for everyone.

In this case, the operators were asked to simply mark a "–" in the gray box for any hour they were under rate, an "x" when they made rate (plus or minus 5 percent or so) and a "+" when they were above rate. Anytime the operator marked a "–" in the gray box, he or she also wrote a comment as to what was going wrong or what problems were occurring. If the operator made or exceeded rate, no comments were needed. That's it . . . just a quick check mark and a comment when things weren't going well. That's all we wanted. (We did also ask them to give us feedback on the quality of 5S they were being left with by the previous shift.)

Remember that these charts must be large and visible. They need to be easy for operators to fill out and equally as easy for supervisors to see, read, and interpret. They can be used for gathering historical data, but that is NOT their primary value. They are to be used for real time problem solving. Do not make them so elaborate or try to capture so much data on them that the operators might get confused, lose time and get frustrated.

We're going to discuss the use of the charts such as these for problem-solving in more detail next month, but some of you might already be skeptical about their effectiveness in the real world. You might be wondering, for example, if operators ever resist actually using them. I have used charts in a variety of settings – including union shops – and have never gotten overt resistance by operators to filling out the charts. They might fill them out wrong or incorrectly, but a friendly reminder always gets them back on track. But will operators fill the charts out honestly? I have never encountered any trouble with corrupt data. If supervisors are checking the charts regularly throughout the day, it is too easy to catch any "fudging of the facts". The supervisor who is paying attention should not have any trouble catching discrepancies, whether it is an operator who says he is making rate when he's not, or another operator who making up problems to write down when he is not making rate.

My experience is that operators, if anything, are honest to a fault in filling out charts. I've seen comments next to poor production hours like, "Too tired"! If anything, the charts give the operators a way of publicly communicating and getting immediate help with problems that may have been frustrating them for a long time, but for whatever reason were not addressed earlier by management.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Rick Bohan is the principal of Chagrin River Consulting, LLC, Chagrin Falls, OH, www.chagrinriverconsulting.com. For questions or comments on this column, contact Rick at 216-409-9056 or [email protected].