Production Machining - Your access to the precision machining industrial buyer.
Issue link: https://pm.epubxp.com/i/753552
18 PRODUCTION MACHINING : DECEMBER 2016 Helping Precision Machine Shops Be More ProducƟve and Proftable If our shop's mission is the creation, protection and provision of goods and services to customers, what are the means that we use to do this? By what means can we use to ensure that our entire organization is performing to sustain the customer's demand that sustains our organization? In order to assure that our organization as a whole achieves our goals, we must choose a means that reflects the entire organization's provisions of goods and services. I have assembled some information from a variety of sources to help me make the case that our shops need to have a standard work process for both how we provide products and serve our customers. Why Standard Work? Standard work has been rigorously applied in manufacturing production, with the result being some of the highest achieved quality available today. Toyota, a pioneer of the application of standard work through its Toyota Production System, is benchmarked as best-in-class by all of its peers and competitors throughout the world for high quality, high productivity, manufacturing speed and flexibility. According to Velaction, "…Standard work (often called standardized work) is the cornerstone of any continuous improvement effort. It locks in gains and provides a foundation for future advances. Standard work helps companies reach their improvement targets, but also provides a stable, reasonable working environment for frontline employees." Link: velaction.com/standard-work Standard work is a means to provide stability and consistency throughout an organization. It is essential if we are to provide consistent performance. It provides the basis upon which we can launch our continuous improvement efforts. In his book, "The Toyota Way," Jeff Liker describes the importance of standard work to the Toyota Production System (TPS): "Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment." This can be restated, "Having the right process will produce the right results." Do we have a "right process" for dealing with customer service issues? Lean.org puts it this way: "Standardized work is one of the most powerful but least used lean tools. The benefits of standardized work include … reductions in variability, easier training of new operators, reductions in injuries and strain, and a baseline for improvement activities … Standardizing the work adds discipline to the culture, an element that is frequently neglected, but essential for lean to take root." Link: short.productionmachining.com/standardwo Standard work is employed in manufacturing organizations in order to drive out variation and to fine tune production processes, improving quality by eliminating variation, waste and employee confusion. Standard work reduces variation by reducing the number of choices that an employee has to make to complete an essential task. By reducing the number of unnecessary choices, standard work enables the performer to perform the needed task without any confusion or doubt regarding which tool or implement to use, and it saves time and wasted effort picking up the incorrect device. Standard work has resulted in many organizations' performance achieving some of the highest quality available today. Using Standard Work to Best Serve Customers By Miles Free, Director of Industry Research and Technology, PMPA, mfree@pmpa.org Continued on page 20 At UPS, the standard work discipline of no left turns delivers results to the bottom line, while better meeting customer demand, increasing the safety of drivers and the public and reducing the resources used." "