Manufacturing Process Improvement: Eliminating waste in transportation

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Manufacturing Process Improvement: Eliminating waste in transportation

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One of the forms of waste that Lean manufacturing looks to eliminate is the waste of time spent in transportation. This includes both the time spent moving between the different workstations on a factory floor and the time to deliver the finished product to your customer.

How to handle wasted time in production

Moving parts from one location to another doesn’t add any customer value to your product. By eliminating, or reducing, as much transportation time, you can get your finished products delivered to your customers faster.

Measure the total time it takes to manufacture the product and determine what how much of it is spent moving between workstations. By reducing that time, you can increase the number of finished goods you’ll be able to complete in the same time.

The first thing you want to do, as you want to do with any form of waste, is to see if you can eliminate it. If you can’t eliminate it, then look for a way to reduce it.

One way to reduce transportation time is to move your workstations closer together. If you’re producing a wide variety of items, each with different steps that may, or may not, need to happen at the different workstations, this may more difficult to plan.

If you can’t move the workstations closer, there are other ways to reduce wasted transportation time.

Let’s say one worker spends 15 seconds performing a task, it takes 20 seconds to get the part moved to the next step, and the next worker takes 10 seconds to complete their task. Consider having the first worker perform both tasks. That will reduce the time to complete both value-adding steps from 45 seconds (in total) to 25 seconds.

If you have the same worker moving the parts from one workstation to the next, you may want to consider switching to a manufacturing cell – having all the required tools and equipment in one location. This way, the worker doesn’t need to move, in order to complete the multiple steps they are performing.

However, if you have a worker perform multiple steps, you need to make sure that you are not creating a bottleneck at their workstation. Always remember that Lean manufacturing focuses on improving the total process, and not just the individual steps.

How to handle wasted time in delivery

Once you’re done with the manufacturing process, and have finished goods, you still need to look for wasted transportation time in delivering them to your customer. Ultimately, that’s when you are paid.

If you store up finished goods in a warehouse, and make infrequent, large deliveries, you can investigate the possibility of making more frequent, smaller deliveries.

First, you’ll need to see if your customer is capable of accepting these smaller deliveries. It may turn out that it helps them by reducing the amount of warehouse space they need to hold your products.

Secondly, you’ll need to see if the cost of the more frequent deliveries does not decrease your profits. Be sure to include the positive benefit for the time-value of the faster payments you receive from your customers when performing this calculation.

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Tags: • manufacturing cell • workstations • transportation time • moving parts • wasted time • transportation • waste • time value • warehouse space • finished goods • how much • how to • lean manufacturing • factory floor • process improvement • manufacturing process •

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