Wastes Case

One of key areas of my responsibility is to monitor production schedule to ensure sufficient materials are available for downstream processes. But there are situations where materials are not available or are on hold due to some quality or delivery issues. Operators waiting for materials (blend) and this cause downtime and delays. This is a good example of waste and can be classified as a NVA task (waiting). Usually this happens when product quality or equipment issue occurs at the previous production step.

Transferring material between different work centers takes a lot of time and motion. Our production floor layout wasn`t initially designed for bulk production. Work In Progress (WIP) stores are located at the center of production floor. Granulated materials need to be stored in WIP store until compression will actual start compressing particular batch. Every batch has three to four (depends on the product) stainless steel drums which contains blend of materials. Granulation crew need to push those drums into a WIP store and compression crew have to do the same task again later. In my opinion this is a typical example of NVA activity causing extra transportation and motion. Only possible way to eliminate this task is to redesign floor area or try to plan a better flow of materials by improving production schedule.

There are four different types of cleaning in compression: comprehensive, major, punch and minor. Type of clean is specified in SOP`s (Standard Operating Procedures). Major cleans need to be executed between lots of same product but different strength when comprehensive clean before start of new product. Punch and minor cleans are most frequent ones. In my opinion a high number of those cleans don`t have a sufficient justification in reality. Minor changeovers takes average 80 minutes and need to be performed after every batch of the same product. As long as this is the same product there is no need to spend too much time on hoovering and cleaning compression room. By removing unnecessary tasks our average minor changeover time can be reduced by 50% and this will increase OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness). So this is another example of NVA and can be classified as an over processing waste.

It wasn`t difficult for me to find and identify type 2 Muda without doing extra gemba walk. Because I`m directly involved in production process so "Gemba" is my actual work place. The only think that I`m really concern is how much waste in created in our production process and how this can be reduced and eliminated.

Type 1 Muda are activities that create no value but are required to maintain operations. These activities are classified as BVA (business-value-added).

In last 2 years our company undergone a massive transformation to conform to highly demanding Japanese market. This include some construction work in production department, installation of high