Part 6 in our TIMWOODS series
Clearly, there are many different ways that people waste time, money, and resources, but throughout our series my objective is providing new ways for you to think about the opportunities in your operation. In previous articles, we’ve talked about the wastes of Transportation, Inventory, Over-Production, and Defects. As our friend TIM WOODS has been guiding us through our lumber yards, manufacturing operations, and offices, two of the standout wastes we see are Motion and Waiting.
What is Motion?
Motion can be defined by those movements of man or machine which are not as small or as easy to achieve as possible. A simple example is bending down to retrieve objects/WIP/raw inventory at floor level when it could be fed at waist level—that would reduce retrieval time and the extra energy expended. Excessive travel between work stations and excessive machine/cart movements from start to a work station are also examples.
Resources are wasted when workers have to bend, reach, or walk distances to do their work cell/station. You can see many examples while walking (Gemba walk) at the saw cell, in the production/assembly, and even in your finished goods area. An unorganized tool room or disorganized raw material storage can also be examples.
Identifying Extra Motion
Big wastes of motion are easily recognizable, and are often eliminated through common sense. When the layout of a work area is excessively large, often as a byproduct of overproduction, distances increase, leading to more wasted motion. I see this in lumber yards and component operations where material is spread out throughout the operation. You can also see motion waste at the cell layout, with associates placing product at floor level on pallets or the floor itself, poorly arranged space, tools that are disorganized, lack of space and organization for component parts, and so on.
Any motion employees have to perform during the course of their work, other than adding value to the product or order, should be identified as waste. This includes walking. Look at motion within a cell: are the processes being performed causing you to constantly turn and rearrange the product being worked on?
Always look to see, do you have a machine or associate moving around, searching and finding things; this kind of motion does not add value. Motion costs you time and money and increases the amount of energy your associates put out; this includes machines, after all even robots wear out. We have all heard the adage, “work smarter not harder”—this is something I coach on with associates so they recognize the importance of eliminating those extra steps.
Waiting
When work in progress and goods are not being worked on, they sit there waiting—waiting for the next process. Associates merely serving as a watch person for an automated machine, or having to stand around waiting for the next processing step, tool, a batch, part, etc., is an example of the waste of waiting. Maybe the associates just plain have no work because of no stock, waiting on the saws, delayed trucks to load, equipment downtime, and capacity bottlenecks—these are additional examples for you to identify.
Identifying Waiting
How often do you spend time waiting for an answer from another department in your organization, or waiting for a delivery from a supplier, or for an engineer to come and fix a machine? We tend to spend an enormous amount of time waiting for things in our working lives (and personal lives too)—this is an obvious waste. When you are on your Gemba walk, watch for your associates waiting on material, waiting on the previous machine cycle to complete, waiting for a forklift operator, etc., because this will tell you where you need to work on a process, improve productivity, or review the steps in your value stream. You pay for the time spent by all of your associates, time that they do not spend adding value while they are waiting and often the time spent waiting is made up later during overtime at a premium rate. The cost of the time spent waiting will come directly from your profit.
The waste of waiting disrupts the flow and rhythm in your operations. If you are scheduling properly, and we can help you with this, you will see a reduction in waiting. This includes scheduling the productivity at each cell and machine. If you are holding your associates accountable, the wasted time of waiting will also decrease.
Waiting means that product is costing the company money and not adding value.
“Seeing” The Wastes
If you spend the time to review the value stream of your operation, and spend time walking through each step of a quote/order, then you will begin to see where you have opportunities to reduce Motion and Waiting. Sometimes the wastes are easy to see, but sometimes it takes a little more effort and you might benefit from some additional help. One method we have used with good results is assembling a visual representation of a value stream in your operation using stickies on the wall and then looking at the time or steps between each operation. We can help you with this and other tactics for eliminating all 8 of the TIM WOODS wastes. So remember, if we can be of assistance to you, it would be our pleasure to help you, give us a call!
Best Practice Tip -- Going Paperless
Here’s a Lean Tip you can implement in addition to what we’ve discussed. Are you aware that SBCA now has the Jobsite Packages available in electronic format? With SBCAdocs, you can easily create a digital document for a specific job, include it with your truss design drawings and other project-specific materials, and email it to everyone involved in the project. We always talk about ways to go paperless in our operations, so here’s a great start for you to consider. Not a member of SBCA? Then you are missing out on a lot of awesome benefits! Join Now and save even more on electronic documents and many other programs.
Ben Hershey is CEO of 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC, the leading provider of Management and Manufacturing Consulting to the Structural Component and Lumber Industry. A Past President of SBCA, he has owned and managed several manufacturing and distribution companies and is Six Sigma Black Belt Certified. Ben has provided consulting to hundreds of Component Manufacturers, Lumber Dealers, and Millwork Operations in the past seven years. He is highly recommended by customers and leaders throughout the industry. You can reach Ben at ben@4WardConsult.com or 623-512-6770.
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