Reference no: EM131816046

For the following posts Offer additional information based on your professional experience or research and Post an article or website and summarize why it might provide further insight

Post1: "As a lean practitioner at a large aerospace manufacturer, I have the mission of driving the implementation of lean tools and processes at the cell level. The company itself is very large producing a wide variety of components for both the final air framers and engine manufacturers throughout the world. However for the discussion topic throughout this course, I would like to focus on a particular value stream at a small site in the midwest.

This site is a smaller site when compared to others in the organization employing about 400 salaried and shop floor people. It has a low volume, high mix demand for the fuel injection nozzles that they produce. These nozzles are flight critical parts that are used in the combustion chamber of a jet engine. The specific value stream produces four different part numbers for the product family and represents about 40% of the site volume. It runs on one shift using 10 direct labor employees to weld, assemble, and test the nozzles.

Current State

This specific value stream struggles with on-time delivery to their customer. Material outages and production delays within the internal processes cause a majority of the late deliveries. As a result, the team is in a constant state of expediting and firefighting. Team members are frustrated that they cannot run the line consistently. The challenge given to me is use the lean tools to drive on-time delivery improvement to this value stream.

Problem Focus

A quick walk of the product flow shows quickly a challenge that this value stream faces. During the manufacturing process, the parts must leave the cell and travel to a shared braze process 3 different times. The brace process is used by almost all components at the site. At this process, parts are batched and loaded into a furnace and heated to a high temperature for several hours. The return of the parts to the cells from the braze shared resource is inconsistent causing delays for assembly and test.

This problem is definitely solvable and and benefit from the use of lean tool analysis. A shared resource is not an uncommon problem and exist at almost all manufacturing sites. Tools exist to analyze and manage these resources (Rother& Shook, 1999). A better understanding of the total shared resource demand and amount of process time required would be a good starting point.

Ultimately a schedule could be determined to make daily output and delivery more consistent and predictable. Also other wastes and non value add activities could be eliminated improving the output of the furnace. This improvement would have a direct positive impact on the ability of the value stream to meet customer delivery expectations."

Post 2: "Working in the Project Management Office (PMO) for the Aftersales department, there is a responsibility for ordering and coordinating the receipt of various prototype components. Unfortunately, this process is sporadically "ad hoc", and often ineffective.

As a result, Aftersales' requests often take a back seat and receipt of prototype parts is given a lower priority, if not disregarded completely.Therefore the required prototype parts are received very late or not at all.

Perhaps the issue arises from poor communication, as it is likely that nobody outside of our department realizes the urgency of the sporadic and inconsistent orders; to word it metaphorically, other departments may view our requests as extraneous "fat" in their process, whereas we identify our needs as imperative "muscle" to complete requisite tasks (George, 2010, p. 8).

Of course, properly tackling this issue would require more than simple surmising and jumping to conclusions (McManus, 2005, p. 37). The (relatively) newly added step of "D-Define" in the DMAIC of Six Sigma would be the first step in analysis, but only if this process is chosen for revolutionary improvement (Henderson & Evans, 2000).

Before this problem is to be chosen, most important is an understanding of whether it would even be solvable. To optimistically say that "anything is possible" is not the perfect approach here, but in referring to Mark George's 2010 text, it would appear that this problem does fulfill several of his enumerated requirements for an eligible problem: it is challenging and without a clear answer, but solving it would add notable value for many stakeholders and customers, as well as be directly linked to company strategy and priorities (p. 45-46).

Specific to this problem, eliminating the risk of uncertainty (whether or not the prototype part would be received) would enable timely planning of other tasks (such as validation of the prototype part and relevant feedback prior to start of production) to ultimately satisfy the business strategy of delivering what the customer desires (easily serviceable components) (McManus, 2005). The scenario surrounding this problem is not unique and should be solvable much as similar problems have been in myriad other organizations.

Furthermore, not only would solving this individual problem benefit the organization, but beginning a culture of similar efficiency improvement would last well beyond any singular crisis (George, 2010, p. 10).

The empowerment to act quickly and definitively would prove most statistically beneficial for the organization. As Hugh McManus explains, corporate practices are most inefficient when riddled with "wasted time", even more so than with "wasted effort" (2005, p. 20). Still, standardizing and guaranteeing the success of such a "pull" system (activated by a department's order) would also eliminate the wasted effort of unneeded outputs (McManus, 2005, p. 28).

In conclusion, resolving the "ad hoc" nature of the Aftersales PMO's prototype ordering process would be handily done utilizing Lean Six Sigma methods, those that involve "doing it right the first time and implementing changes that generate value while acting quickly and efficiently" (Brett & Queen, 2005, p. 60).

The exact statistical results of implementing a lean methodology of improvement cannot be determined without further analysis, but it can be logically supposed that increased efficiency would result in various benefits, including increased confidence in the planning process and continued adherence to the corporation's business strategy.