New Balance
Athletic Shoe Manufacturing

To assess the current process and apply appropriate Lean Manufacturing tools and techniques to enable more efficient manufacturing on their athletic shoe assembly line.

Project Description:
Current State:​ The company made two types of product; Sourced and Cut to Box.
Sourced
Completed uppers for the shoes were bought in from the Far East.  A collation stage within the factory boxed these uppers with corresponding soles and packaging in set quantities (lines).  A pallet would be loaded with these boxes and fed into the assembly area where a number of manufacturing cells would debox the product and assemble the uppers to the soles.  The cells were manned with five operatives who carried out the assembly process.  Work-in-progress existed between each process stage within the cell and some operations were more complex than others.

Cut to Box
For this product, components were cut from the raw material and sewn together to form the upper.  Some of the stitching processes were automatic and some were manual.  Each stage of the process was grouped in a different part of the factory and work-in-progress moved from one process stage to the next when completed in baskets.  Once the upper was complete, it would then be fed into one of the manufacturing cells where it would be paired with the corresponding soles and assembled.
 
Future State:-
Sourced
The manufacturing cells were re-designed to have only four operatives assembling the product, each with a carefully defined amount of work such that all four processes took the same amount of time.  Work-in-progress within the cell was eliminated by implementing a single piece flow methodology. The future state manufacturing cell was smaller in footprint than current state and 5S was introduced to demarcate the new layout.  Freed up operatives were grouped into more teams and new cells created in the space freed up from the reduced footprint size of the existing cells.  Systems were put in place to control the amount of work-in-progress fed into the factory which freed up even more space for further manufacturing cells.

Direct Benefits Achieved:

• 35% Productivity improvement
• 35% reduction in Manufacturing Cell footprint
• Factory capacity tripled from 1 million pairs per year to 3 million
• Cost competitive with Far East on outsourced manufacturing of the sourced product

Cut to Box
A large manufacturing cell, renamed as a Value Stream, with enough equipment from every process stage of sufficient quantity required in order to manufacture an upper from start to finish was created.  The equipment was laid out to facilitate single piece flow and manned accordingly.

Direct Benefits Achieved:

• Lead time for manufacture of product reduced from 10 weeks to one hour

Other Benefits:

• Finished Goods stock reduction
• Stock accuracy up from 64% to 90%+

This photograph shows the factory floor before the introduction of Lean Manufacturing. The processes are arranged in process silos and the majority of the available floor space is filled with work-in-progress between the silos. Analysis showed that only 40% of the available floor space contained value adding activity.

This photograph shows the current shop floor with minimal work-in-progress and floor space utilisation above 90%.

This photograph shows one of the manufacturing cells before the introduction of Lean Manufacturing.

This photograph shows the manufacturing cell after the team had redesigned it using Lean principles. The cell was 35% smaller than the previous cell and only required four operatives compared with five before the change, achieving the same output. This equated to a 35% Productivity improvement.

This photograph shows the development of the first value stream for the Cut to Box product, where the requisite number of machines from each process stage were joined together in one large cell. Once implemented, the value stream reduced the manufacturing lead time from 10 weeks to one hour.

This photograph shows a value stream mapping exercise in progress with members of the New Balance team developing a current state map of their business. They went on to create a future state map which delivered a significant reduction in the levels of finished stock and a system that improved their stock accuracy by over 25%.

"Ian has become a trusted and valued member of our team who just doesn't work here all of the time."

ANDY OKOLOWICZ - FACTORY MANAGER AT NEW BALANCE 

Pinewood Associates
Office Screen Manufacturer

To assist the Company in improving operational efficiencies to support increasing Sales through application of the appropriate Lean Manufacturing tools and techniques.

Background:
Pinewood Associates Ltd have been successfully manufacturing quality Display Boards and Office Screens for reseller clients within the Education Supplies, Office Furniture, Stationery and Exhibition Industry for over 20 years.  Increasing demand for its products had created a number of problems for the Management team and they approached IW Process Solutions to identify possible changes to increase productivity in line with the rising number of orders.  
​
Project Objective:
To assess the current manufacturing processes and introduce changes to increase productivity and eliminate waste through the application of Lean Manufacturing Tools and Techniques.  

Project Delivery:
The project was delivered in a number of phases which were prioritised by the Pinewood team, in relation to the differing levels of increased demand being experienced by the various manufacturing sections within the factory.  A number of Lean Manufacturing techniques were to be used across the factory to create the Future State layout needed to improve efficiencies:

• Cellular Manufacturing
• Line Balancing/Single Piece Flow Implementation
• Visual Process Management
• Kanban Stock Control Procedures
• Demand Levelling
• 5S Workplace Organisation

Current State:
The product experiencing the highest level of increased demand was Office Screens.  This was a multi-stage process which had stations spread across the shop floor and a batch system was employed at each stage.  Assembly personnel would move about from stage to stage as and when batches were completed at a stage.  At the end of each day, production would stop to facilitate the packing of all the product produced that day ready for collection by courier.

There were two other primary manufacturing centres, one which focused on Aluminium framed product and another which produced PVC framed product.  

Each manufacturing centre was supplied with wood, aluminium and PVC parts in various standard lengths from a Cutting area at one end of the factory.  This area was continually under pressure with demand for parts coming from multiple centres at the same time.  Occasionally, this led to production in one or more centres stopping waiting for parts to be cut.  It had also forced the business to consider recruiting additional resource for this area.

At the other end of the factory was a Packing centre which packaged the Aluminium and PVC products manufactured each day.

Three sides of the factory were racked out to hold stocks of packaging, covering materials (rolls), accessories etc etc.

This photograph shows the adhesive application machine used in the process of manufacturing office screens.  Some of the completed frames waiting to be processed can be seen stored in the racking behind the machine.​

This photograph shows the Material Covering table following the application of the adhesive.  The roll of material can be seen at the head of the table waiting to be rolled out over the frame.

Future State:
Office Screens:
The team were trained in the principles of Lean Manufacturing, focusing on line balancing and single piece flow, and then tasked with considering what changes they could make to their process based on what they'd learnt.  Immediately they could see the relevance and a three stage process was developed, with two people permanently assigned to each stage (a saving of one person from the Current State).  The work content was divided up so that each stage took approximately the same time so that single piece flow could be introduced.  Additionally, the work content of stage 3 included the packaging of the product, thus extending the amount of time each day that could be spent producing.  By the end of the training day, the team had marked out on the shop floor where all of the machines, assembly tables and parts were to be located to create a Flow line.
Once the layout changes had been made and the team settled with the new working methods, a Short Interval Control board was introduced to provide a visual display of the teams performance against target on an hour-by-hour basis.

Aluminium & PVC:
The creation of the Office Screens Flow line on one side of the factory then facilitated the moving of the other two manufacturing centres alongside it to create three Value Streams side-by-side.  It also allowed the Packing Centre to be incorporated into the central factory area thus freeing the fourth side of the factory to be racked out for additional storage if required as volumes continued to grow and grow.  Additionally, by moving these two manufacturing centres closer to the Cutting area, it significantly reduced the distance needing to be travelled delivering/collecting parts.  A similar process management system to that employed in Office Screens, the Short Interval Control board, was planned to be introduced into these two centres.

Cutting Area:
To further reduce the pressure upon the Cutting area, a series of kanbans were created between the Cutting area and each Value Stream which would hold approximately 4 hours worth of all the various standard lengths of parts each Value Stream used.  The parts were loaded into the kanbans on the Cutting side and emptied from the Value Stream side further reducing any travelling associated with delivering parts meaning more cutting time for the Cutter.  The empty kanban was easily visible to the Cutter and would signal that this part would need replenishing but it meant that no "immediate" demand would be placed on the Cutting area from any Value Stream allowing the Cutter to plan what he needed to cut and when.  Also, no production stoppages waiting for parts would occur.
Additonally, since Office Screens were the biggest growth area, another technique was used to average out the demand for parts for this Value Stream to control the time spent daily on parts for this Value Stream.  T​he following spreadsheet shows how the seven months of Sales data was analysed and broken down to quantities used on average during a day to attempt to level the demand on the Cutting area for wooden parts:

Across the size range of Office Screen sold, it was calculated how many pieces of each part length were used in each product and multiplied by the amount of screens sold of that size over the seven months. This then gave the total number of each individual piece length used in all of the screens sold in the period, the column headed "7 monthly". This amount would automatically include the surge in Sales experienced by the business up to that point.  From this total amount, a daily average was calculated and 10% added to allow for further growth in Sales.  The 10% column therefore represents the levelled demand for wooden parts for the Cutting area.  Finally, a "Safety" amount was calculated to cover for daily fluctuations in sizes sold to cover worst case scenario. 

As a result of these changes, the business shelved plans to recruit additional resource for the Cutting Area.

Workplace Organisation:
To raise the standard of tidiness and cleanliness throughout the factory, all staff were trained in the 5S methodology and then given time to apply the methodology to their work areas.

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