by Paul Akers
The following weeks were like a religious retreat for me – an immersion into a new way of thinking. After my introduction to the power of eliminating waste and the concept of continuous improvement, I was introduced to the idea of “one-piece flow” or making one product at a time.
This concept is about as counter-intuitive as it can get to the modern American mind. For the past century, our culture has been steeped in a manufacturing economy that relies on mass production. We live in the era of “bigger is better,” and “super-size me!” and “if something is good, more is better,” right?
FastCap was no exception. We operated our shop floor in the mass production, big batch mode of thinking, which is exactly the opposite of one-piece flow.
At FastCap we produced large batches of products regardless of how many orders we had from customers because we believed we were saving time and money. As it turned out, we were creating more work and mountains of waste using the batch production model.
We produced one of our products, called the Laserjamb™, in batches of 100. By our own calculations, it took about 45 minutes to produce each Laserjamb. A batch of 100 took about 75 work hours to complete from beginning to end. By producing them in batches of 100, we thought we were saving time, ensuring that we always had the product on hand to fill orders as they came in. When Brad and Jon suggested we start making these one at a time and only on a per-order basis, I thought they were out of their minds. I believe my actual words were, “No, that will never work!” (Some is saying about “teaching an old dog new tricks” that comes to mind FastCap was hypnotized by big batch methodology of manufacturing. One Piece Flow -21- right about now.)
The manufacturing environment I had created required enormous amounts of space dedicated to making this product. Making them in batches of 100 meant that we needed to accommodate 100 Laserjambs for each step of the process. For starters, we needed enough workbench space to hold 100 Laserjambs at a time. This created a very spread-out situation that required transportation resources to move the Laserjambs from one part of the plant to another.
The batch production process was consuming our space, equipment, personnel resources, and money. I looked at this as a necessary evil in exchange for efficiency. Making 100 at a time made the most sense to me. In humble compliance with Brad and Jon’s recommendations, we started making one Laserjamb at a time. By any experienced manufacturer’s first glance, this process would be too tedious and time-consuming to make sense. I was eager to show these so-called experts what a futile process this was going to be. I was humoring them, or so I thought.
They spent the first week re-arranging everything we did into small U-shaped manufacturing cells. My company started to look like some Asian revolution had just invaded and I was the victim. Remember how much confidence I had in my great company and my manufacturing ability? Well, it was nothing short of humiliating watching these young, “inexperienced” kids rearrange almost everything about our company – stripping our shop floor to the most fundamental components. It was like somebody saying, “Paul, your baby is ugly. We’ll take The old dog did indeed learn new impressive tricks! Large workbenches to store large batches of work. If one mistake was made, the whole batch would need reworking. Laserjambs new U-shaped Cell – one person doing the work of four with no mistakes. 2 Second Lean™ -22- it from here.” So much for my “young and hip” company!
What do you think happened? Once again my eyes were opened to the magic of Lean thinking. Using one-piece flow, each Laserjamb was produced from beginning to end by one person, who was able to visually inspect the whole piece as he or she was assembling it. This one-at-a-time process allowed us to catch mistakes as they were happening. Perhaps a hole was off-center or maybe a knob was not screwed on correctly. Whatever the mistake, we were able to catch it during the production process for each Laserjamb, rather than at the end of a batch. Fixing one defective Laserjamb is easy. Having to fix 100 defective Laserjambs at the end of a batch is a disaster!
Improvements like these had a transformative ripple effect as well. Not only did we see each product getting produced with more personalized care and attention – very few mistakes if any – but the rest of the process began to go more smoothly as well. Filling the orders, loading, shipping, billing and the back and forth cash flow associated with this process was immediately simplified.
Rather than having 100 Laserjambs to store, inventory and track, we had zero because each Laserjamb was produced to fill an order. It was produced, packaged, boxed, shipped and paid for. This also meant that we weren’t spending money producing something that hadn’t been sold. We had a lot less inventory and labor hours sitting on the shelf. A good visual is to imagine all the finished goods as though they were heads of lettuce, wilting by the hour.
One-piece flow simplified and improved every other part of the manufacturing process. This Lean thinking was beginning to make sense to me, in a really counter-intuitive way.
Paul Akers is an entrepreneur, business owner, author, speaker, Lean maniac!
He is the founder and president of FastCap, a product development company with distribution in over 40 countries. FastCap, based in Ferndale, Washington, launches 30+ new innovative products each year and is regarded as a model Lean manufacturer.
Paul is an energetic speaker whose core passion is helping people discover their full potential and showing others how to implement Lean in their business and personal life. Paul’s passion for Lean has taken him around the world to over 70 countries to work and speak.
Paul has written 5 books, "2 Second Lean", "Lean Health", "Lean Travel", Lean Life, and "Banish Sloppiness".
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