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Component Manufacturing dverti$er
August 2017 #10217 Page #36
Adverti$er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
Improve Your Motion Ben Hershey, President, Coach, & Mentor 4Ward Consulting Group, LLC
and Waiting Part 6 in our TIMWOODS series
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learly, 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.
TIM WOODS: Our “friend” and acronym for the 8 wastes in Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-Processing, Over-Production, Defects, and Skills.
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. PHONE: 800-289-5627
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