At the end of April the VENTS conference hall opened its doors to the participants of the first summary briefing on the results of «Lean Production» initiative.The agenda included presentations from representatives of 10 production and administrative units reporting on the results, addressing the challenges encountered as well as defining the future goals and plans for achieving them.
The sky is the limit!
Due to the constantly growing load of the manufacturing facilities and the urgent need of streamlining the order schedule in 2015 «VENTILATION SYSTEMS» implemented the «Lean Production» initiative – a comprehensive program for optimizing every aspect of the company's business processes. The mastermind behind the lean production concept implementation at VENTS was Peter Willats, a recognized expert in business process optimization with an impressive record including successful projects for Siemens, Bosch and Mercedes-Benz). The company started with identifying a broad scope of work and the priorities for various business units such as: focusing on flow-line production of each item; avoiding unreasonable work which generates no value; preventing equipment malfunctions; reducing the percentage of waste; minimizing buffer stocks of the finished products; reducing downtime; streamlining the logistics etc.
Rising to a new level
The VENTS lean production fair was based on the results achieved in the first half-year period. We have interviewed Dmitry Anufriyev, the lead process and equipment operation engineer asking about his impressions of the meeting, the achievements and the challenges:
«The VENTS team was introduced to the lean production basics and principles about a year ago. During the first months, we focused on the key objectives and the program implementation methods as well as held a series of briefings for the company staff. These activities helped us assemble action groups tasked with identifying various kinds of waste at all of the production steps and taking measures to address the shortcomings.
During the lean production fair the 30 participants were split into groups each one presenting their results according to the pre-formulated goals. These presentations were followed by interactive Q&A sessions to discuss the outstanding issues.
Figuratively speaking, lean production is like a river, which flows unobstructed. Our task is to find the problem areas, identify the factors, which stifle the flow and eliminate them. We also realize the importance of timing production to the customer demand to avoid stockpiling ready products at the warehouse.
In 90 % of the cases the shops and departments reached their goals. In particular, the integrated tool production unit demonstrated a two-fold productivity improvement while the domestic fan shop managed to optimize a number of crucial work flow steps by installing additional equipment which also helped boost employee motivation. In addition to that, the production planning department and the design bureau team are now working in sync helping reduce the number of shop floor calls. The metal processing shop team focused on the top-priority goal of shifting from mass production to the on-demand scheme to meet specific orders from the customers or peer units. Despite frequent equipment reprogramming the metal processing shop team retained their performance positions and managed to significantly reduce the percentage of waste and pushed ОЕЕ (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) to 75%.
Overall the meeting was a definite success as it gave us a chance to identify the key challenges and discuss most efficient ways of addressing them. Therefore, it was decided that from now on such meetings will be held on a regular basis».
