Control

Control:

 Companion Line OEE Improvement


As mentioned in the improve phase, a periodic maintenance schedule was put in place on both the Assembly machine paper banding station and the Flowrapper crimping station, this in theory is a form of preventative maintenance carried out to prevent an accumulation of unscheduled short stops on the Line.

Sample Line Side Paper Band Cleaning Verification Sheet:

 In order to simplify the line layout and ensure the commodities were to hand for operators at all times, we looked at the drop off locations used on the line by service personnel to replenish commodities, we identified some areas that were not clearly visible and identifiable by machine operators and service personnel alike, an example of an improvement can be seen below:

As part of the over DMAIC Improvement project the following improvement in OEE was realised:

At the start of the project a total of 160,000 units was the targeteted improvement in the line performace in for the 57 Production days between the 07-Oct-13 and 20-Dec-13.
Based on the realised project OEE improvement of 4.5%, this means the project realised a total unit gain during a 2 cycle 8 hour shift pattern for the period 73,530 units.

 Although the project did not meet it required improvement goal of 70% OEE or an increase in shift out put of 1500 units, we did achieve an overall OEE improvement of 4.5% or an additional 73,530 units over the life time of the project.

As can be seen below, this increase in output removed the need to run 8 Saturday overtime shifts at a cost of ~ €8,000 each, an overall project saving realised of €64,000.



Improve

Improve:


Companion Line OEE Improvement


As part of the Improve phase the project team has looked at data analysed during the Analyse phase of the project. As graphed in the Analyse phase of my blog, in order for the Companion line to meet an our required OEE of 70% then we must improve our line takt time by 0.48 seconds, 3.10 seconds to 2.62 seconds.

From the Analyse phase of the project, the main items affecting this takt time were:

1. Assembly machine paper band faults
2. Flowrapper crimp torque faults
3. Stopcock machine feeder bowl jam faults
4. Operator reaction time to faults
5. House keeping 5S

1) As the Paper Band faults RCA actions were complete and a supplier complaint was lodged with the supplier of the paper band, the team looked at the best possible way optimise the the performance of the paper band station, along with inconsistent peal torque values, it was also found that the the adhesive coating was not consistent between paper band batches and from line experience, excessive adhesive on paper band leads to adhesive build up on the paper band cutting mechanism leading to failure of the station to operate.
In an effort to address this build up, the project team decided to introduce a maintenance intervention twice per shift, where the Crafts man on duty would clean the cutting blade on the paper band station during operator breaks, therefore removing excessive build up of paper band adhesive.
This action was an interim action to the suppler complaint raised, in order to improve the consistency of the paper band batch received from our supplier.

2) Similar to the paper band station reliability, once the data from the Analyse phase was analysed, it was found that short stops on the Flowrapper caused by crimp torques, were causing significant amounts of downtime that again warranted a maintenance intervention twice per shift, also during the operator breaks. A check sheet to verify the cleaning maintenance on the paper band and Flowrapper crimp stations was put in place.

3) Stopcock machine feeder bowl

There exists a number of snag points on the Stopcock feeder bowl, once a Stopcock becomes snagged on one of these points a short stop downtime interval occurs, starving the Stopcock assembly machine of Stopcocks. After investigation it was noted that this bowl had in fact been designed for a different type of Stopcock and had been modified in house to feed the Companion line Stopcock, every effort had been made to engineer the snag point out of the bowl for the running of the Companion line Stopcock, the decision was take as part of this project to install a Stopcock feeder bowl track low level sensor on the track leading from the feeder bowl to the assembly machine, once this sensor was not made for a predetermined period of time, then a sounder would go off, alerting the operator to a feeder bowl jam.  Also as part of this project a proposal has been brought to Senior Management to apply for a capital investment to replace this bowl.

 

4) Operator reaction times to a machine alarm and also to clear machine alarms was identified as a major contributor to machine down time, in order to assist the operators with their knowledge and training on equipment, machine Job Aids were developed an example of an image taken from the Flowrapper Job Aid can be seen here:

 

 

5) Companion Line 5 S;

 

SECTION 1.0 PURPOSE

 

To create and maintain an organised, clean, safe and high-performance Manufacturing Line at the manufacturing facility.

SECTION 2.0 SCOPE

This procedure will describe the management and control for managing Manufacturing Lines under the following headings:
 

1. Sort
2. Set in order
3. Shine
4. Standardise
5. Sustain

SECTION 3.0 DEFINITIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

 

Sort	Clearly distinguish needed items from unneeded items and eliminate the latter
Set in order	Keep needed items in the correct place to allow for easy and immediate retrieval
Shine	Keep the work area clean
Standardise	Standardise the first three S’s
Sustain	Make a habit of maintaining established procedures.

 

SECTION 4.0 The 5S process
 

 

SORT

Goal is to remove all items from the Manufacturing Line that are not needed for during production.

 

5S Red Tag Procedure:

1. Identify unnecessary, unneeded, or misplaced items.
2. Fill out the 5S red tag
3. Log the red tagged item into the 5S Red Tag Register
4. Move the item to the red tag area 
5. After a given amount of time (typically one week), in the Central Red Tag Area, remove the item as it is no longer necessary. 

Examples of red tags

 

Red Tag
Red Tag No.
Date Tagged
Office Location
Item (s) Description
Quantity
Reason for Tagging

 

SET IN ORDER

Goal is to arrange needed items in the office.

 

1. Visually organise the Manufacturing Line

·         Draw boarders to identify work area’s

·         Provide a “home address” for each bordered area 

SHINE

Goal is to remove dirt and dust from the Manufacturing Line. 

1. Determine shine targets
2. Set a housekeeping schedule and assign responsibilities.  See below an example of a housekeeping schedule.

5S The Manufacturing Line Housekeeping : Companion 2013 / 2014

Nov 13

Dec 13

Jan 14

Feb 14

Mar 14

Apr 14

May 14

Jun 14

Jul 14

Aug 14

Sept 14

Oct 14

Seán

Keith

Martin

Shane

Chris

 

STANDARDISE

Goal is to create consistent way of implementing the tasks performed.

1. Notice Boards will have at minimum Plant Goals
2. 5S Notice Board content standardised

·         T Cards , Photo of 5S Mfg area           • RADOR Diagram

·         Housekeeping Rota                              • Housekeeping Checklist

·         Areas of Responsibility

 

SUSTAIN

Goal is to have a discipline that ensures continued success. 

1. Create 5S radar chart for summarising results.

5S'd Companion Line Inspection area:

   

 

 

Analyze

Analyse:


Companion Line OEE Improvement


As part of the Analyse phase the project team looked into the data from the Measure phase, the data collected in on the hour-by-hour boards and also the data integrated from our in process monitoring system. This data showed up a number of interesting finds. We noted that short stops & raw commodity in house supply, rather than prolonged periods of equipment downtime were the main causes of the poor line performance.

In order for our process to move closer to the desired OEE target of 70%, the machine requires an improved takt time, as can be seen from the diagram below this takt time value needed to reduce from 3.10 seconds to 2.62 seconds, this is a reduction of 0.48 seconds in the current takt time value.

The Companion Line is validated to run at 30 units per minute, taking into account 40 minutes for scheduled breaks during an 8 hour shift, there is an overall potential for a Companion Line takt time of 2 seconds, but that would be in an ideal world!!!

Looking at the data from both our on the line hour-by-hour boards and the production monitoring system, the following data was became available:

Companion Line in process shift data table sample:

Breakdown of the top 5 short stop hitters on the Companion Line taken from the on line hour-by-hour boards, in week one of the Companion Line OEE improvement project:














From our analysis of the data gathered during the Measure phase of the Companion Line improvement project it became clear that the issues affecting the line performance were not solely machine related, operator reaction time to machine short stops/faults, the duration of the operator clearing those simple machine short stops/faults and also the replenishment of raw material to the Line affected the overall performance of the line.

With those factors in mind, the project team set about looking at the different aspect of the individual problems by trying to get to the root cause of the problems that were holding back the line performance.

As can be seen from the bar chart above, one of the big hitters relating to Line stops was the Paper Banding issue on our assembly machine, in order to get to the route cause of the multiple number of short stops generated by this station, an Route Cause Analysis (RCA) of the station was carried out:

Picture illustrating a Companion finished & paper banded set:

As part of the RCA into the Paper Banding issue an on the line RCA meeting was held, at this meeting the project team and in house Paper Band subject matter experts gathered to tease out the problem at hand around a company RCA board as can be seen below:

An RCA study of the Paper Band adhesive peal torque was carried out, the in house peal torque spec is 0.4 to 0.8 lb/sf, see below histogram of results

As can be seen from the Histogram analysis of the paper banding issue on the Companion line, the peal torque values are not evenly distributed form the sample of 118 taken. This leads us into the next phase of the DMAIC project, "Improve" where we looked at measures to improve our paper banding process, operator training / engagement and line commodity replenishment.

Measure

Measure:                                                                                 

 

Companion Line OEE Improvement
As part of the Measure Phase of DMAIC the project team used some of the following tools to look at the Companion Line it's current state.

• Data Collection (hour by hour board)
• Fishbone Diagram / Ishakawa Diagram
• OEE (historical data based on factory process monitoring system)

Data collection (hour by hour board): As part of the project, the project team decided to introduce an hour-by-hour board to the line to capture any new or any on-going issues during the 8 hour shift, as part of the introduction of this board the project team carried out a series of workshops with Line Operators and Maintenance Craft members to ensure optimum engagement with the improvement process.

Example of shift hour-by-hour board:

Information Captured on hour-by-hour board:

- Shift (1st or 2nd)
- Hourly Target (@ 70 % OEE 1260 units)
- Actual # Produced
- Delta from hourly target
- Delta from shift target hour to date
- OEE by hour
- OEE shift to date
- Line issues during the hour

Issues taken from the hour-by-hour board above were transferred to the problem and counter-measure template on the left.

Twice per shift on the line meetings with leadership took place to determine the status and progress of issues assigned to project team members on the problem and countermeasure template.










Fishbone diagram / Ishakawa Diagram: during the project, frequently occurring issues that arose from the hour-by-hour board and then transferred to the problem and countermeasure board were investigated as part of a sub project to the overall project by members of the project team. One method that we used was the Fishbone diagram, to tease out a problem by engaging the subject matter experts from the various processes across the site, please see below one such example for an issue which continued to cause frequent short stops on the line, Set Paper Banding:



 To the left an on line RCA board can be seen, this board is portable on wheels allowing us to move it from area to area for stand up meetings and also to troubleshoot machine downtime issues. As can be seen we investigated the Paper Banding issues under the topics of Man, Material, Machine, Method, Mother Nature and Measurement.





Opposite is a picture of the paper band station on the Companion assembly machine. The Paper Banding is applied to fully assembled sets at the end of the process to keep the set neat and tidy for the next stsge of the process, Flowrapping. The process is a 2 station process where by paper is pulled under the set at the first station, then wrapped and pressed around the set at the second station.


OEE histicorical data analysis: on site we have an in process monitoring system (Pragma) which feeds into a computer database giving Engineers and Team Managers an overview of how the line is performing on an ongoing basis. Information such as machine alarm frequency and machine stops are are graphically shown. However the route cause behind the machine stops may not always be apparent from the Pragma data give, that is why we decided to go down the route of an hour-by-hour board as a means of data collection to compare Pragma data versus what actually happens on the line.