Lean Spring Manufacturing
Today we are hearing many people talking about Lean Manufacturing. It is hard to pick up any manufacturing publication without seeing something about Lean Manufacturing. The fact is, Lean is nothing new. We have been trying to take cost out of the manufacturing process since we first started making things. Lean has gone by many names over the years: “Efficiency Management,” “Value Engineering,” “Waste Reduction,” “Total Quality Management,” “The Toyota Production System” and many more. Today, Lean methods try to focus on the entire process – from order placement through production and finally to being paid for the parts.
Using a systematic approach, Lean training teaches us to look at every step of the process, find those steps that are wasted effort and eliminate them, while trying to reduce the time of the required steps.
Most conversations with “Lean experts” tend to focus on inventory reduction, throughput, cycle times and setup time reduction. All of these issues are critical, but the first step in becoming more efficient is making sure that, from a quality perspective, our processes are under control and stable. The fundamentals of a good quality system must be in place before we can go about fixing the process.
In this issue of Springs magazine, we will learn how Lean works and how we, as springmakers, may use it. Like any business system, Lean must take into account the economic environment in which we live. We may become very successful in taking cost out of our processes, but our suppliers and customers could affect how successful we will become. Raw material shortages and rising prices can affect how much inventory we need to have. In a perfect Lean system, we should only get the material when we need it. In the real world, if prices are rising, the right business decision may be to buy more than our immediate need and inventory the rest. In some cases, customers have difficulty planning their requirements. How we are able to respond to short-dated orders is critical to our ability to maintain our business. Having a Lean fast-response system can help speed delivery but, with some customers, inventory may be necessary.
Lean manufacturing processes stress continuous flow of a process; they discourage batch processes. However, in a world of escalating energy costs, continuous processing may not always be the most cost-effective. At one of our divisions, our outside supplier could no longer make daily pickups because of high fuel costs. This is the kind of challenge that we face as we try to make our processes lean. In meeting such challenges, we need to determine whether a lean solution works; we need to do the “math.”
Nevertheless, lean, or whatever we choose to call it, has become part of what we must do if we are to remain competitive in today’s world.
The information in this issue of Springs is intended to help you understand how a springmaker can use Lean. Like any other business practice, Lean alone will not solve your problems. That is where SMI comes in. By participating in your regional and national SMI programs, you will have the opportunity to share your “Lean journey” with other springmakers. It can also afford you the opportunity to see how other springmakers respond to changing market conditions, like raw material costs and availability, the rising cost of energy, government regulations, health care costs, and all the other external things that affect our business.
I hope to see all of you in Florida at the SMI Annual Convention, March 17-20, 2007. Together, we can make a difference.
