News Archives

Vibro-Meter, Inc. Implements Lean Manufacturing

Like many Meggitt businesses, Vibro-Meter, Inc. is on a 'Lean' drive. Paul Leppard, VMI's Lean Project Leader, explains: "The first change gives you the biggest bang for your buck," says Paul Leppard about 'lean manufacturing'. This is, of course, the philosophy that enables a workforce to improve processes continuously, reducing the delay between the first day a customer order is taken and the day it is delivered.

VMI's first Lean initiative on a fuel probe line started with a structured clean-up to improve order and safety in the work environment. Called 5C or 5S, the workspace selected is now free of non-essential process items and is checked daily to maintain the new order.

Lean is about more than neat and tidy workspaces. It tackles the yield issues that can be obscured by volumes of work in progress, and often solved by individuals at a tactical level. However, they are not usually in a position to review an operation strategically and design inefficiency out of a system once and for all. With Lean, a cell can be set up to produce the number of units required by a customer within a given timescale, and yield issues will come to light very quickly. Then you are in a position to solve the problem for the long term."

To fix quality problems, shorten lead-times, and eliminate waste, Lean replaces traditional 'batch and queue' production methods with as near to 'single piece flow' as can be achieved, moving the smallest practical quantity of product between manufacturing stages. Mr. Leppard explains: "More or less everything we do is about keeping the product moving around a factory rather than creating downtime and wasting space as larger batches come to a hald, mid process, because of a specific, lengthy treatment."

Production Group Leader, Beth Kissell, has taken to Lean with great enthusiasm. She has been working on the production of probes for many years and says "Life in a Lean cell is a lot easier. There's no overproduction. You only build what you need for the day." The revolution for her is the reduction of batch quantities. "Producing smaller batches has a dramatic impact on the lead-times we can offer customers.

Lean is a discipline as well as a philosophy and improvements must be measurable. The current state must be documented before designing and implementing the future state. "Establishing a benchmark to measure all improvements against is important if we are to know what we are improving as we make changes," says Mr. Leppard.

Current and future states are developed using 'value stream mapping', which shows how materials and information flow throughout a manufacturing process from supplier to customer. "It's really about putting a stake in the ground so that you can look at all the process steps, and then take that model and refine it," says Mr. Leppard. Lean's 'seven wastes' immediately rise to the fore. Some Lean gurus believe there is an eighth waste - underutilized resources such as the shop floor workforce. "They are truly an un-tapped resource in most companies," asserts Mr. Leppard. "Lean recognizes that people on the line at the sharp end are the experts. With Lean support in place, they will be fully empowered to stop a line to solve a quality problem and redesign a process."

Mr. Leppard acknowledges that while the principles of Lean are simple, applying them requires informed decision making by a well-trained workforce. Teaching, therefore, is an important aspect of the Lean process. John Ramsden, Continuous Improvement Manager, from Vibro-Meter, Switzerland, performed the role of trainer and facilitator on VMI's Lean pilot. With his help, VMI's Lean team were able to implement a new layout for the fuel probe line and conduct a 5C clean up in one week.

VMI's goal is to achieve the leanest of layouts and processes. "Perfection is impossible, of course. What's important is that you keep looking at what you are doing with a fresh eye so that process imperfections don't become institutionalized," states Mr. Leppard who also hints at the big picture. He is convinced that in todays tough business climate, Lean is essential to a company's long-term survival because it can have a positive influence on a company's ability to produce the quality, cost, and delivery times demanded by customers.