The "little" pearl

Ehe life of a company, especially a 49-year-old family business with a long tradition such as Reichle & De-Massari AG (R&M) in Wetzikon, regularly adapts to changes in the economic environment. The changing framework at R&M was the steadily growing customer demand for fiber optic technologies at internationally competitive prices.

First, the strategy...

R&M responded to its customers in 2012 with the completion and commissioning of a new production facility in Bulgaria. Until then, the production of fiber optic systems "Made in Switzerland" had largely taken place in Wetzikon. Thanks to the new site, R&M is now able to respond flexibly and competitively to rising demand and the increasingly demanding challenges in the project business. After all, customers want a specific product in the high Swiss quality they expect, as quickly as possible, at a good price.

However, such customer orientation cannot be achieved by investing in a new production facility alone. New market requirements, a new production site - the right time to make a

"Jolt" through the company

Change of strategy, because the starting position in the production of fiber optic technologies has changed significantly: From now on, all standard products will be manufactured in Bulgaria and no longer in Wetzikon. The production site in Wetzikon has been given a new task: processing express orders for fiber optic systems, the so-called "fast track". This mainly involves the assembly of customer-specific solutions that cannot be configured.

...then the jolt: PEARL...

This is how R&M's management formulated and communicated the new strategy. This is important - it gives all employees a target for their actions. The mere definition of a long- to medium-term vision, a daring cloud or a north star pointing the way is also not enough to grab all employees by the hands and take them along on the common, new journey. A "jolt" must go through the company.

At R&M, this jolt is now called PEARL (P=Performance, E=Empower, A=Accellerate, R=Resource, L=Lean). The PEARL initiative was jointly developed, launched and communicated within the company by the entire management. Now it is a matter of filling the contents of the pearl with life together with the respective employees of the departments.

...then operations with the help of Lean

Filling the pearl with life means analyzing, improving, adapting or revolutionizing the subordinate processes of the new strategy. According to the principle: Operations follow Strategy. Within the PEARL initiative, these new operations or processes are to be defined with the help of proven lean methods in order to achieve the new goals of the strategy: Manufacturing of standard products in Bulgaria, processing of the "Fast Track" in Wetzikon.

Start with Lean Production

The introduction of Lean Production is not the end of PEARL. Production itself is again a customer within the company, for example the internal customer of development. If R&M's external customer, a company, a network operator or data center, asks for more and specific fiber optic systems, production will have to produce more and more specifically. For development, for example, this means configuring the products so that they can be manufactured in the quantities ordered and with the desired product specifications. This in turn involves purchasing, sales, management, etc. - the pull principle familiar in lean management: the external customer "pulls" his ordered product through the company, through all departments

This is exactly why PEARL will not end with Lean Production. Sales will also be affected by the new production strategy and increased demand. Lean Sales, Lean Development will be the further operations under PEARL. Thus

Strategy - ACTUAL state

Gradually, all processes in all departments are aligned with external and internal customer requirements. This can create a flow of material, man, machine and information that works hand in hand without waste and thus delivers the customer his desired product at the right time, in the desired quality and at the best cost.

The need for action

Only by comparing the new strategy with the current situation can a concrete need for action be determined. The current state of fiber optic production in Wetzikon was determined with the aid of value stream analyses, work distribution diagrams, work stack diagrams, sequencing diagrams, etc. (Fig. 1). The new production strategy with the expansion of production in Bulgaria led to the hypothesis that production in Wetzikon could also be operated with less waste and shorter throughput times.

Two proven lean methods are suitable for hypothesis testing: Lean Line Design and the levelling of production to individual partial quantities (cycle times). In the course of the ACTUAL analysis, however, it became apparent that leveling production in Wetzikon does not make sense. According to the new production strategy, the "fast track" products are to be manufactured here. The project business with special customer requirements is so large that a plannable levelling horizon would not be possible. The design of the line according to the concept of Lean Line Design must take this circumstance into account.

lean line design

The focus of lean line design, which creates lean production lines, is on employee flow planning. An ideal employee flow is created by passing on one product at a time. This prevents inventory and shortens lead times. In Lean Line Design, after determining the requirements and irrespective of all framework conditions and supply

Plan the flow of employees

The ideal flow of employees is conceived and implemented in the line design. The supply and the framework conditions are later designed according to this (Fig. 2). This represents one of the biggest differences to the traditional conception of a line design

The new "Fast Track" production in Wetzikon must be highly flexible and, above all, fast due to the very specific and varied customer requirements. R&M does not want to compromise on the delivery filling time of four days on average under any circumstances. For production, this means very short throughput times and the smallest possible batch sizes in order to be able to react flexibly to every new order received.

After the needs analysis, there were two possibilities to try out the employee flow in real life in order to transfer it later into a line design: 1) The bunny run optimization and 2) the line balancing. Two groups each took on one of the variants.

The Hare Run

In the hare run, the principle of independence applies: The first employee takes the first order and produces the cable independently at all stations until the end. The second employee receives the second order directly after the first employee and runs after him like a "hare". After the completion of the order, the first employee starts again from the beginning and runs through all work steps again. The rabbit run implies that all employees are trained for all work stations and can operate them. The R&M-PEARL team found this to be feasible.

During the bunny run optimization, however, it was also determined that the "gluing" step could become the bottleneck to be mastered. The R&M team drew and glued together its favored line design using templates. Its solution in the rabbit run: several gluing stations with specialized employees. The upstream and downstream work steps are carried out by one and the same employee. This employee is fully responsible for the job assigned to him. He carries it with him at all times, except at the gluing stations.

In real production, this is to be implemented with a rail and a cable pull on the ceiling, to which the cables to be processed, together with the order, are attached with a specially manufactured holder. The cable pull enables the employee to position it ideally at the necessary work station without cable stress and to move it from one work station to another. However, the hare run also requires that the loading of the orders is done in such a way that the employees do not interfere with each other at the stations. This is because, especially with the planned "fast track" production in Wetzikon, very different orders are loaded that do not require all workstations. Therefore, an order loading board was included in the layout planning of the line design. There, the orders are picked up in an orderly fashion on laminated cards. Due to the flexibility required by the customer, it is also possible to bring orders forward.

The line balancing

In the case of the line balancing variant, an attempt was made to assign as many employees as possible within the line, who pass on the work in progress in partial work steps. The challenge here is to distribute work packages of the same size to the employees so that no unnecessary waiting times occur within the line. By adjusting the number of employees to the daily customer order fluctuations, the line has to meet several line balancing charts. Not a simple matter when the orders vary in complexity and frequency. With this variant

Shape the line differently

clear limits were set, which are difficult to meet in the sense of a "fast track" line.

Two birds with one stone

When the bunny run optimization group and the line balancing group met again and showed each other their layout sketches, a similar layout was recognizable, only with different employee flow and modified work distribution. Together, the group came to the conclusion that, contrary to expectations, bunny run optimization is optimal for highly flexible production in Wetzikon. For the majority of production of standard products in Bulgaria, however, line balancing is the optimal production process.

From paper to reality: the mock-up

An important principle of a lean culture is transparency. The spark will not be transferred to the workforce if the strategies, current statuses and needs for action are only in a few heads. The visualization of this information in the form of posters, but also in the form of line prototypes, the mock-up in cardboard or 3D form (Figure 3), is not only important for the more efficient implementation of the line, but also serves as a simulator for the training of employees. Here, all teething troubles can be eliminated and the optimizations refined

A real production simulation, as in the mock-up, also supports visualization for other areas at R&M. Development now understands more easily which configurations production needs for a smooth manufacturing process. The development department is involved in the design of the line at an early stage to enable and accelerate smooth transfer with uniform, small batch sizes on the semi-manual work processes. In Lean Line Design, production thus becomes the customer of development and at the mock-up they meet!

Conclusion

A uniform production layout for two locations with different employee flows and different order workloads, optimization of the line design for waste-free production, and new ideas for product handling: All this is the first result from a little gem that started with Lean Production from the customer's point of view and is now putting out its feelers to the other areas from the internal customer's point of view. Dinner is served.