Mid-States Aluminum Corp., a Fond du Lac custom manufacturer of aluminum extrusions and anodized parts for the automotive, furniture, and medical industries that employs 240, was facing machine reliability issues, long quote and setup times and an overall improvement effort that was unfocused. For help, they turned to WMEP’s Lean Six Sigma approach to address waste and variation in their processes, apply their improvement efforts more uniformly across the plant and fulfill customer requirements.

“We had a continuous improvement department, but it wasn’t a functional department that spanned the entire plant,” said Tim Rice, Mid-States’ Lean Six Sigma deployment champion. “We had factories within a factory. We weren’t operating as a cohesive unit.” When a new CEO joined Mid-States who had a background in Six Sigma, the company was set on a new course. “Lean Six Sigma unified our ability to focus on a few set projects, rather than dealing with a lot of horizontal priorities,” said Judy Lux, Mid-States’ Lean Six Sigma black belt.

The first project addressed excessive downtime on an extrusion press. “It was making it difficult for us to make scheduled production and achieve growth goals,” said Lux. “We wanted the process to be more
reliable.”

They created a Value Stream Map of the process, which illustrated material flow with the goal of eliminating non-valued added activities. They realized that the bottleneck was a belt transfer system that moved materials from the press to the next production area. To discover why the belt kept slipping, they used 5 Whys, a Lean Six Sigma analytical tool, to determine the root cause without using statistics. They learned that the belt had been lengthened over time to make it easier to change during maintenance. But  lengthening the belt also caused it to slip. They returned to the original belt size and purchased better tools to make maintenance easier. They also used some grip tape to keep it from slipping – an easy, $50 solution.

Another project involved Setup Reduction for secondary equipment on the shop floor. After parts are extruded, they often need additional work that requires drill presses, grinders or buffers. This auxiliary equipment was being moved from work station to work station. “When they needed the equipment, they had to go on a hunt,” said Dick Welsch, WMEP manufacturing specialist and portfolio manager for Mid-States. “They could spend 30 to 45 minutes looking for something and a lot of times, it was already being used.”

During a one-day Kaizen event to solve the issue, they developed a simple solution – a scheduling board showing the location of all machines and their status. They also developed an equipment list so that all equipment was accounted for. Finally, they decided to put the equipment on wheels, which eliminated the search for a forklift or pallet jack to get the equipment to where it was needed.

Mid-States’ Lean Six Sigma efforts were not confined to the shop floor. They also created a Value Stream Map of their quoting process and used Lean Office to reduce their quoting time by half. “Our sales department indicated that in order to be a world class company, we had to turn quotes around in three days or less,” said Rice. “We developed a different way to process quotes with fewer handoffs between departments and fewer people involved.”

The results of Mid-States’ Lean Six Sigma work, in conjunction with capital improvements, include:

* Reduction in material handling-related downtime at the extrusion press work station of more than 90%
* Reduction in quote lead time of almost 50%
* $50,000 in cost savings
* $75,000 in estimated sales added (due to capacity gains)

One of the major advantages of Lean Six Sigma is that cost savings continue to add up over time. For example, a company saves $100,000. In the past, it was an ongoing cost. Now, it’s ongoing savings. It doesn’t take much for it to add up. That’s the power of this method.

To help keep tabs on results and stay on track, “we monitor the results on a weekly basis at the management staff meeting,” said Rice. If metrics are not on target, they can still see if improvement is occurring.

Both Rice and Lux have been trained to the level of Six Sigma black belts, knowledge that “can be helpful if you’re in a highly competitive arena,” said Wil Cox, WMEP manufacturing specialist.

As with any improvement work, management support is key. “You can’t be semi-committed and have this work,” said Cox. If internal issues are already taking up resources, with employees spending time every day putting out fires, why not just focus that energy and make it your improvement project? It’s not about creating more work. It’s about how you can change the work so that it’s easier to do.

Finally, manufacturers considering Lean Six Sigma shouldn’t be put off by the statistics. “It’s a methodology for improvement. It’s really as simple as that,” said Rice. “It’s about long-term problem solving and sustaining the improvements you’ve made,” said Lux.