What is World Class Manufacturing?

Put simply World Class manufacturers are those that that demonstrate best practise according to their industry standards. There are a number of categories called “competitive qualities” that they must compete to be at the top of in order for world class manufacturing to be achieved.

Competitive Qualities

The Competitive Qualities are as follows:

-Quality
-Price
-Delivery Speed
-Delivery Reliability
-Flexibility
-Innovation

Becoming a leader in these qualities should be an aim for all companies. However trying to compete in every single one of them is unrealistic for the majority.

Techniques involved

The following techniques and principles are usually undertaken when trying to compete.

-Make to order
-Streamlined flow
-Small lot sizes
-Families of parts
-Doing it right first time around
-High employee involvement
-Multi Skilled Employees

Higher productivity is achieved in implementing strategies that strive to eliminate waste and improve operations. Speed is also to be looked at within world class manufacturing. It is not just about making the process speedier to get to the finished product. It is about making the process speedier to get, without any quality compromise, to the finished product.

Issues faced with World Class Manufacturing

Capacity driven manufacturing dominates western thinking. World Class Manufacturing principles are process driven and this difference can sometimes cause conflict. Many people do not like change and want to do things the way they have always done them. Companies must involve their employees when planning for change so as to try to eradicate this problem.

Questions to ask yourself to find out of your company is world class

World Class manufacturing standards vary from industry to industry. These questions should be fairly generic and are only given as a guide.

1. Do you regularly ask your customers for feedback about your service and then seek to improve it?
2. Do you have an active lead time reduction group? If not why not!
3. Have you laid out your machinery in such a way to make the distance between sequential operations as short as possible?
4. Do you have an on-going educational process for new staff to learn from and old ones to keep up to date?
5. Have you taught your entire staff basic problem solving techniques?
6. Do you have a process that quickly evaluates all feedback and suggestions from your staff?
7. Do you monitor your overall equipment down time and seek to minimise it?

If a company seeks to be the best then they must consider these principles carefully.

For more information see world class manufacturing

Total Productive Maintenance and OEE Systems

Total Productive Maintenance (or TPM) is a long established Japanese process focused on improving productivity and reducing waste. With Total Productive Maintenance the machine operator is trained in fault finding and simple maintenance. Teams known as “zero defects” teams try to minimise defects and issues. These teams are made up of experts and normal workers.

The workers then glean knowledge and expertise and are the able to give a higher contribution. If defects and machine downtime are reduced the results from your OEE Systems will be improved.

TPM’s Other names

TPM can also stand for “Total productive Manufacturing” and “Total process Management”. It is basically deterioration management. A well-known motto with TPN is “zero error, zero work-related accident, and zero loss”.

The three goals of Total Productive Maintenance

1. Zero product defects
2. Zero equipment unplanned failures
3. Zero Accidents

The first step is to look back at plant history, lean manufacturing fugues and OEE Systems. These are analysed and then a plan to move forward is made. You just have to look at the card and the map analogy. You can only plan a route once you have a destination and when you know where you are leaving from.

Total Productive Maintenance and the 6 big losses

The 6 big losses are as follows:

1. Set up and initial adjustment time
2. Equipment breakdown time
3. Idling and minor losses
4. Speed and cycle time losses
5. Start-up quality losses
6. Process quality losses

Total Productive Maintenance and its 8 Pillars

The 8 Pillars of Total Productivity Maintenance are as follows

1. Focused improvement
2. Autonomous Maintenance
3. Planned Maintenance
4. Training and education
5. Early phase management
6. Quality maintenance
7. Office Total productive maintenance
8. Safety, Health and environment.

Such manufacturing processes and analyses such as Total Productive Maintenance and OEE won’t be useful to every business in manufacturing. You must assess your specific needs and requirement. Obviously in every business there is need for waste reduction, trained employees and maximal productivity.

The basics and principles of these processes, however, can be taken and applied.
OEE Systems will measure your overall equipment effectiveness on a stand-alone basis but it is much more powerful when used in conjunction with other processes like Total Productive Maintenance and Kaizen. They are powerful together!

For more information see OEE Systems