A combination of competitive pressure and business growth led LaForce Inc., a supplier of metal doors and frames that employs 250 at its Green Bay facility, to turn to Lean methods to improve flow-through and keep lead times under control.
LaForce is unique in its industry because it both manufactures and distributes its products. They compete against manufacturers with highly automated lines by offering custom products and flexible delivery, so short lead times are important to their customers. As they experienced growth, “we weren’t able to keep our lead times down where theyneeded to be,” said David Allison, LaForce plant Manager. “We weren’t in a crisis, but we were looking at any way we could to improve.” They had already done some Lean work in their front office, and turned to WMEP for help in implementing Lean on their shop floor.
They began with 5S/Visual Workplace in their bend cell production area to create clean, well-organized workspaces. There was a tendency to save items, then forget about them until the area became cluttered. They cleaned up along the walls, sorted through cabinets, got rid of the clutter and established visual controls. They soon learned that employees had created personal stashes of tools, resulting in multiples of tools -- more than would ever be needed. By installing tool boards, they can now easily find and store tools.
To address other issues affecting the bend cell, such as excessive WIP and inefficient andling of material, they used Value Stream Mapping to identify where waste was occurring.
“There was a mountain of WIP lying around that could be turned into flow,” said David Townsend, WMEP Manufacturing Specialist. Sheet metal was being moved through four operations in the cell. After moving through the upstream operations, the metal was placed on trays and the trays were put on racks using a forklift. Downstream, the metal was moved using carts.
“It was a sea of carts,” said Doug Bengson, WMEP Project Manager for LaForce. “And the racks were very full.”
“We had the traditional push concept in place,” said Allison, “where we would fill up every work station and every employee to the max. We would let WIP accumulate. We modified traditional metrics, and it worked for quite a while. But we wanted to move beyond that.”
So they created FIFO lanes, or first-in-first-out, to minimize the amount of product between work stations. This led to the elimination of the racking system and need for the forklift. They also set up stations for the carts downstream to get rid of the sea of carts, and moved a machine to eliminate a handling step.
“The goal was to spend less time on non-value added tasks like handling,” said Allison. “With FIFO lanes, we’re not batching as many work orders. We’ve minimized the amount sitting in WIP, which has directly impacted lead time. We have better flexibility and predictability to get material through the process.”
After cleaning up the shop floor and improving flow, they started considering the time spent transferring programs to their CNC machines. With the help of their manufacturing designers and an investment of $1,000 to rewrite a driver, they are now able to mass-transfer programs, which has gained them an hour per shift of production time. “That’s the beauty of Lean,” Allison said. “Once you’ve covered the obvious, you can focus back on systems and processes.”
The results of LaForce’s Lean work include:
• $198,000 in cost reductions
• Estimated $100,000 in gained production from CNC programming change
• 10% productivity improvement in the bend cell
• Shortened lead times from 4-5 weeks to 3-4 weeks with a 40% increased output in the cell; avoided having to lengthen lead times to accommodate increased output
• Shortened cycle time through bend cell from 8 days to 3-4 days, with a goal of 2 days
“What was really unique with LaForce was combining 5S with Value Stream Mapping,” said Bengson. While the initial response to 5S was strong, they lost some momentum as the work progressed. It was about halfway through the 5S work that the VSM work was started. “It really helped them understand why they were doing what they were doing -- why we were creating FIFO lanes, why it was important to control inventory. As they understood why we were doing these things, the effort picked up steam again,” said Bengson. “The VSM was the critical thing, along with good support from management.”
Creating the VSM was a group effort that worked well. “Before, if one person had brought forward an idea, we probably would have said, no, that won’t work. But in a group setting, we agreed on things,” said Allison.
Their goals now include reducing lead times further down to 2 weeks, reducing inventory for other product streams and engaging suppliers to help them with that effort. “We want Lean to be part of our culture,” Allison said. “It’s a good fit for us.”