I enjoyed a rare opportunity at IWF last month to spend an hour walking the floor with the CEO of one of the industry’s fastest growing companies.
Among many other topics, he asked me my thoughts on lean manufacturing. I realized, as I answered him that I had no formal training in lean theory or technique, but I had ideas on what works. Like most of you, I had heard terms like Lean, Kanban and Six Sigma, but never really tried to quantify or define them. For me, it all comes down to a question of material handling. It has been my observation, through years of working with many different companies, that material handling is where Lean exists.
In my view, Lean Manufacturing means that each time a part is handled, every possible operation is completed at each work station. In an ideal custom cabinet shop, a CNC would drill, mill and cut the parts of a cabinet as a group. That stack of parts is immediately send along to edgebanding and/or edge boring. Finishing is the next stop, then that set of parts regroups in assembly, where hinge plates, slides and any other hardware is added prior to actually assembling the cabinets.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, he told me that nobody does it that way, and it didn’t make sense logically. I held my ground and told him that that is because most shops, especially smaller ones, do not take into proper account the time lost to material handling.
In next week’s Blog, I’ll discuss the actual cost of material handling and ways to minimize it.
I totally agree with the material handling part. We just recently installed a Komo nested base machine and the Auto Loader to go with it. I also spend $3000 on a manual conveyor system, best money I have ever spent. We cut out labor by 30%. Like everyone else we always used the parts carts, constantly taking a part out, machine it, and putting it back in the cart. What a waste of time.