The PC Systems Blog

I want to share a continuous improvement effort that was presented by one of our Quality Engineers, Dave Gillen.  Dave has worked at PC Systems since “the beginning” and has consistently been looking to improve peel performance of welded wire to Copper solder tabs, which is one of our core products.   Through a series of corrective action activities, he had declared that the “flaring” of wires when welding smaller gauges (18/20/22AWG) caused a lower peel value on the weld.   Even worse, the “flare” was unpredictable, leading to variability. 

Dave found that the “flaring” was caused by the upper electrode design.  It was cut as a radius, which did not always capture the wires before the weld.  He designed a new upper electrode in a trapezoidal shape.  In Dave’s words, “the results were remarkable”, and I agree!

Variability of the weld was reduced significantly with respect to weld peel.  Also, the aesthetic difference is impressive as well, as you can see in the photographs.  We look forward to using this new design and improving our capability at the welders.  As we are all aware, this reduced variability will likely lead to reduced scrap and increased throughput, allowing us to manage our costs for your benefit!

Contribution is a product of teamwork. Teamwork is a product of improvement. Improvement is a product of success. In order to generate these ingredients to success, it is necessary for a manufacturing company to take the time to conduct continuous improvement activities.

PC Systems held a full Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) event on August 24, 2011. More details are to come about the event in its entirety, but for now I want to dive into a story detailing the almost immediate benefit that team LEAN events can have on a manufacturing process.

Participants of the SMED LEAN event at PC Systems came from many branches of the company, each had one goal in mind: Reduce changeover time of mold tooling. The suspects included company quality manager, engineering manager, engineer, production manager, two plastic injection mold operators, and machinist. The integration of thoughts from each branch led to many noteworthy ideas. Among these ideas was the thought of knurling the allen wrenches used by the mold operators for die change out. Moving forward, it was suggested that rather than using a manual socket allen wrench, it would be more effective to use the services of a battery powered electric drill. These baseline ideas provided the foundation to what was considered to be the best option: An air powered allen wrench.

The iterative process of coming up with this seemingly simple idea portrays the impact that conducting team LEAN events can have. It took the minds of many to come up with such an elementary yet effective solution.  Participant contribution and teamwork allowed for immediate success. The new idea was implemented just days after the event, and is proving to be a solid starting point on the road to tooling changeover time reduction.

Although I have had just a taste of what PC Systems is all about in my limited time with the company, it is evident that a great deal of work is executed to ensure customer satisfaction, and it is amongst the company’s top priorities.  There is an ongoing effort to improve every existing product, process, and idea in order to meet and surpass customer expectation.  In order to secure customer satisfaction, it is necessary to take the appropriate steps internally to better every aspect of the company.  On Thursday, April 21, I attended a LEAN training class with a focus on SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies).

SMED is an important aspect in reducing manufacturing waste, much like all other LEAN tools.  It focuses on the reduction of product lot sizes by simplifying and organizing changeover techniques.  “Single Minute” implies that improvement steps can be taken to shorten changeover time to under ten minutes.  Although many of the SMED ideas can be regarded as common sense, as my boss (Engr. manager Kalen Fitch) will tell you: “Common sense isn’t always very common.”

Howard Wilson, of NWIRC, led the one day “Quick Changeover/Setup Reduction” training course at the Community Education Council in St. Marys.  A quote from the course lecture: “SMED ideas can be viewed as being pretty simple, but if applied properly, can make a complex difference.”

The course introduced the material sufficiently via PowerPoint slides, as well as by integrating a few activities.  The first activity was conducted to demonstrate all non-value added steps that may be taken during a common changeover.  The second involved splitting the group in half, and having a contest to see which team can best streamline the changeover process of the first activity.  I took a great deal of good information away from this course, and would highly recommend it.

By implementing many of the ideas illustrated in this course, I expect a great deal of overall production improvement.  Here at PC Systems, I will use my newly acquired skills to benefit the company in many ways.  I will improve mold tooling by standardizing and simplifying general design to expedite changeover time.  I plan on developing a changeover process that can allow for operators to easily change high running tooling by themselves without confusion.  Other organizational practices and strategies will be incorporated into this process improvement in accordance with SMED principles.

Here in Pennsylvania, the winter months often provide plenty of opportunity for our local drivers to test their mettle and ability to travel on snow-covered roadways.  Just the other evening, we received a fresh 4” of snow which I had to drive my pregnant wife home through.  A couple inches of fresh snow isn’t too big of a deal here, assuming you have access to some good all season tires and put a proverbial egg under your pedal. 

As I was driving home through the slushy “mess” at about 45mph (in a 55mph zone) I was passed by another smaller vehicle.  I thought to myself, “Wow, that is risky.”  I then thought, “I won’t be surprised to see him upside down in the ditch up the road a little further.”

This got me thinking a little bit about risk with regards to my role at PC Systems, Inc.  Unfortunately, when building cable assemblies or wire harnesses, prints and specifications aren’t always complete.  Just as I throttled down when the roads got a little dicey when driving my wife home, I also have the tendency to “slow down” projects at PCS when the requirements are incomplete.  This is because as an Engineer I have a very low appetite for risk.  As our President likes to say, “When we ship parts, we don’t want those parts back.”.  This can be incredibly frustrating for other employees at PCS as well as our customers sometimes.  Whether we are requesting clarification on a print, signoff on a proposed specification, or holding parts in Quality, we are always doing it with our customers’ best interest in mind.  Although it may seem trivial or maybe even annoying, when we request for additional information or sign-offs, it is because this information is required to make sure our parts are functionally correct and not over or under specified.

We understand that many of our customers’ have very complex assemblies and the electrical leads used are typically an afterthought, which is why we do everything we can to understand the application and ask important questions as soon as we start reviewing the inquiry. 

So going back to the original metaphor, the gentleman who passed me the other evening did not end up in a ditch. I presume he made it home safe and sound without issue.  Perhaps I was being too cautious and could have afforded to speed up a little bit.  Here at PCS we have a myriad of personalities, which provides a nice check and balance system for risk assessment and mitigation.  You can be sure that both your timing and quality are both balanced and very important in the minds of every employee at PCS. 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we found a way to increase throughput at one of our machines, but the result was a rather uncomfortable working position.  Let’s take a look at the workstation and what our thought process was for improvement.

A little explanation goes a long way here.  The chair that the operator sits on is in the bottom right corner.  Most of the work is completed on the machinery on the table, centered in the photo.  Two foot pedals on the ground run the air cylinders to run the equipment.  Finally, a box of raw material is located to the left of the operator and a box of finished goods is located to the right of the operator.

I have to add, this workstation looks rather archaic.  It is probably one of the oldest pieces of equipment in the plant, but it is very effective at completing the task it was designed for.

Where are the pain points?

1) Height – The chair isn’t adjustable for height.  Also, you can see an operator added a pad.  Sitting on a hard wooden seat for four hours is uncomfortable for anyone.

2) Seating Position – See that foot pedal, there is another one to the right.  The operator has to straddle the leg of the table so that he/she can get close enough to the equipment to do their job.

3) Twisting – The orientation of the boxes and the tooling requires the operator to do a considerable amount of twisting while seated.

4) Reach – The operator can’t get their legs up under the table due to the bracing.  This forces them to reach to do their job. 

After soliciting some ideas from the operators, we came up with some ideas that would help address many of the issues above.  Most of the suggestions hinged around moving the leg of the table so that the operator was free to move their legs under.

We gave our Facilities Manager the green light to start cutting and welding and I think he did a spectacular job.  Here is the result:

It doesn’t look like much, but this small change made a world of difference.  Here is a summary of the improvements:

1) Height – Although not shown here, we are providing the operators with a padded adjustable height chair that allows them to rotate if needed. 

2) Seating Position – We re-oriented some of the tooling to allow the operators to sit square to the table.  Their legs can be placed under the table without causing discomfort.  The foot pedals can be moved to a position that is most comfortable for the operator.

3) Twisting – As indicated above, we moved the tooling which eliminated most of the twisting.  With the new position, we can put the raw and finished good boxes to the side of the operator so that they only need to reach down to grab a part, rather than twisting and reaching outward.

4) Reach – Moving the leg and brace on the table allowed the operator to move closer to the table, making the reaching distance much more manageable.

I think this is an excellent example of a simple solution that will pay significant dividends for both PCS and our customers.  It may not be our most impressive machine with a bunch of bells and whistles (we have those as well), but this is a machine that is going to affect the bottom line for both of us!  This improvement (and others like it) are what helps us to manage our costs and provide product at the pricing levels that our customers expect.

We are not finished with the improvements at this workstation, but we are going to use this setup for a couple of months and then evaluate the feedback we receive.  Is there anything that you think that we missed?

About a year ago, our Quality Manager approached the Management Team with an idea that he thought would improve the throughput for one of our product lines.  We agreed it sounded like a good idea, so the approval was given to go ahead and make the changes.  After about a month of tinkering, the team working on the new process declared they were finished and we reviewed the results.

Great news!  We tripled our throughput!  Bad news, the operators hate it! 

There were two concerns:

1) We had a higher amount of scrap and rework.  Although reworking only took a short amount of time, we couldn’t be saving money by scrapping all this solder could we?

2) It was very uncomfortable to use.  The operator was working right around the maximum for their reach envelope and there was a considerable amount of twisting required in the chair.

View Full Album

Both points were valid.  How could we take advantage of our increased throughput and make this machine more user friendly? 

Fortunately for us, we had a college aged intern, Zach, who was happy to play guinea pig for awhile.  He ran the prototype machine and process while we analyzed data on scrap and reviewed the ergonomics of the machine, and he did it with a smile.  Unfortunately, college help has to go back to college.  We were forced to act at the end of summer and I wanted to share the changes with some of you. 

Over the next couple days, I will share the improvements we made with you.

The photographs above were pulled from the following site and were used as part of the ergonomic analysis.

http://ergotmc.gtri.gatech.edu/dgt/

Over the past 10 years, PC Systems has progressively integrated LEAN manufacturing concepts into our production flow to reduce waste and provide a higher quality and more cost competitive product.  We have done this with customer guidance as well as internal expertise.

Our conversions from batch processing to single piece flow have yielded some of our biggest improvements and this is one of the characteristics of our company that we really like to “hang our hat” on.  Recently though, an operator brought it to management’s attention that operators were experiencing symptoms of fatigue as a result of working in one of our cells.  In particular, this operator complained of sore/stiff leg joints and dizziness.  The cycle time for the cell is between 20 seconds and a minute, depending on the operator.  This particular operator was making ~900 trips around the cell in a day.  This is one of our most productive operators, but even 600 cycles a day would be an impressive amount of twisting and turning through a day.  You can see a video of the cell here:

LEAN Cell Video

As a management team, we decided the concerns warranted more investigation.  My first instinct was to work in the cell myself for 8 hours to get a feel for the ergonomics of the job.  I have to report that the experience was not terrible, although I felt there were improvements that could be made.  I also spoke with each operator individually to try and pull as much information as possible.  Finally, I looked to my professional network and interestingly enough, I gathered some useful information via Social Networking via LinkedIn.  That discussion thread can be found here:

LinkedIn Discussion

We have decided to limit the time in the cell per operator to 4 hours at this time, while we continue to look for improvements.  Ultimately, it is our feeling that the more comfortable our operators are, the better the quality of the product will be.  We want our operators to take pride in the product they create, the facility they work in, and above all the company that they stand behind.

After reviewing the video, are there any suggestions that you feel would improve the ergonomics that you think we could have missed?  We realize our customer base has a tremendous amount of LEAN expertise, perhaps you would be willing to share some of your comments or best practices that could ultimately reduce your product cost.

Have you ever heard this from a salesman? “We excel at providing low cost, high quality, and quick turnarounds. We can do anything from high volume to low volume and our customer service is the best in the business.” If I could paraphrase, “We are the world’s best supplier!”

We are not any different and I am sure our sales team pitches a very similar story. If we are going to claim to be a company with a continuous improvement culture, we have to show progress to meeting some of the above mentioned capabilities.

I would like to share an example of how we are doing this in our Harness Department. In the past, we typically would build custom harnesses in batches between 5 and 25, with some exceptions between 50 and 75. It is a very high mix, low volume manufacturing environment. One operator per shift would work on the parts, finishing an entire operation before moving on to the next. For example, operator A would terminate the entire 25 piece order, before moving onto splicing, then to layout, etc.

Lately, we have seen our order sizes jump to 100 and 150 pieces. What used to take a week to get an order through the system with one operator, now was taking 3-4 weeks. The throughput did not decrease, but it tied up cash and resources, and decreased our flexibility. All of which decreases our value to our customer. We needed to make a change.

We held a couple informal Kaizen events, started a 5S implementation, and manipulated the layout of our manufacturing space to facilitate better flow through the system. These all helped, but most importantly, we decreased our batch size to 5-10 pieces maximum ala Alex Rogo in The Goal. Using many of the same concepts used in this simple novel, we have increased capacity, reduced WIP, and increased our flexibility for the customer. Most importantly, our operators are happier. They now have much more ownership on the floor, they have the freedom to move around much more (opposed to sitting at a termination bench all day), and Quality is improving.

Interestingly enough, our throughput has increased slightly. Per all of our calculations we expected throughput to decrease due to increased setups, more walking waste, and a new system. You could point to the 5S organization contributing to our improved throughput, but I truly believe it is due to the general morale improving due to the new system. If you are cynical, which many engineers tend to be, you could also attribute the success to white coat syndrome. As expected with any change in manufacturing, our management team is keeping a close eye on the department looking for any potential faults. We aren’t hanging our hats up yet on the increased throughput, but it has been an welcomed surprise for our team.

We are closing in on a full month after making the initial changes. We realize the change is relatively new, but it is our hope that rather than regress we continue to progress with the improvement. All metrics point to an improvement, which we all know is reflected in value to our customer.

Does anyone else have a success story they would like to share, particularly related to using concepts from Theory of Constraints or The Goal?