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Quality Manager Steven Imp agrees. “At first, targeting ambitious improvements strikes some people as impossible. This is particularly true after years of efforts produce substantial results. ‘We’ve already done so much. How could we possibly do more?’ is a typical reaction. It is natural tendency to want to rest on our laurels. But that’s a bad strategy. We must continuously set fresh, challenging goals and hold ourselves accountable.”

Plant Manager Daniel Mercado remembers being asked to find a way to cut manufacturing lead-time in his area from 15 to 10 days. Mercado said, “My first reaction was ‘No way!’ The company’s attitude: ‘Find a way.’”

Mercado and his team analyzed the plant looking for ways to boost throughput 33.3 percent. “We couldn’t achieve this goal in bits and pieces. We had to look at the big picture. When we did, we figured out how to do it,” he said.

The solution came in three parts. First, stage all raw material at its point of use. This slashed travel distances 46 percent. Second, conduct another round of Kaizen events for setups at every work center. Setup times dropped 26 percent. Third, cut work-in-process (WIP) inventories through a mix of quality and lean techniques. Result: close to half the WIP was cleared out.

“Six months after kicking off this initiative, we were able to quote 10-, not 15-day, lead times. And we could deliver in that time frame,” Mercado said.

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“We have lean initiatives underway at all times,” said Tom Ray, Vulcan’s President. “For example, six months ago our die-cutting department scrambled constantly to keep up with schedule changes. We needed to remove that pressure.”

Plant Manager Joe Galaszewski was tasked with finding a way. Die-cutting, a critical production step for many parts, was never a bottleneck. Nonetheless, employees were in constant motion responding to fluctuations in demand.

“For a solution, we turned to process mapping, starting with a clean slate. Since the problem was non-value-added motion, we focused on uncovering the root causes of that,” he said.

Getting raw material was a major source of scrambling, so Vulcan redesigned the work cell to put the six most common material sizes right next to the work cell’s cutter. That resulted in a 77 percent reduction in travel distance and associated travel time.

Getting cutting dies from bins in an adjacent bay was identified as another source of waste. The dies were moved into newly built racks in the cell. That resulted in a 72 percent reduction in travel distance and much less time spent searching for dies, as they were now all right at hand, clearly identified, and positioned for instant retrieval.

Getting required Quality Assurance checks was significantly improved by having the inspector come to the cell. That resulted in a 57 percent reduction in total part travel distance, as the operator and inspector now performed all inspections in the cell.

“By significantly reducing travel in and out of the work cell, we found it took only one operator, not two, to run the die-cutting operation. This freed up a highly cross-trained employee to move wherever there was work in the facility, giving an uptick to overall plant productivity,” Galaszewski said.

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