Transportation
waste is defined as:
The
transporting of parts and material around the plant.
This
is a killer waste. There is no value added in moving material,
raw parts, partially completed product, or finished goods around
the plant. Production should flow from receiving, to production
line, to customer. Ideally, there should be no warehouse for
material, but the textbooks and theory are never quite based
on reality. However, there are improvements that can be made.
Let
us give you a few examples based on our experiences in different
industries.
One
company's production system breaks the final product down into
multiple sub-assembly operations. Each sub-assembly is batch-processed
as a kit. The kit contains raw components and sub-assemblies
or modified components. When the kit is completed, it is carried
(transported) back to inventory and put on a shelf under the
new part number. Depending on the final product, sub-assembly
or component modification, transportation occurs 12 to 20+ times.
Even though it is a small facility and there are some inherent
advantages in the process, the transportation waste is huge when
looked at cumulatively.
An
electronic manufacturer, prior to a plant re-layout, produced
one product that traveled approximately one mile within the 50,000
square-foot production area. That is a lot of "back-n-forth" transportation
of material. Aren't you glad that electronic warranties are not
based on mileage?
Last
example: Making pine boards is a straightforward process. Buy
the logs, saw them up, kiln dry them, put them through a planer,
and ship them to the lumberyard for purchase. We estimated the
travel of a unit of dimensional lumber at a local sawmill. To
our amazement, and the company's, a unit of lumber was transported
between 1/4 to 3/4 of a mile from log to final product storage.
This transportation waste, in addition to several other factors,
created many quality issues and added to handling equipment malfunctions.
Plant
layout and product flows are essential for the elimination of
waste and improved quality.
CITEC
can help you identify the causes and sources of waste within
your operation and help your people create solutions.
Contact
CITEC's WasteBuster today: Eric Myers.
previous | all | next
