Contact: Phyllis Levine at 845.896.6934 X3001 or by Email
Lamothermic Management Notices Changes after Lean 101 Seminar
PICKED UP BY FOUNDRY MAGAZINE JULY, 2007
“The pipeline is starting to materialize. We’re producing products more efficiently and with minimal waste and minimal rework. Our entire rework factor has been reduced from 30 to 10%, and our scrap level has gone down dramatically.” Those are the satisfied comments of Michael Steele, General Manager of Lamothermic Precision Investment Casting Corporation, a casting foundry in Brewster, New York. Due to training received from the Hudson Valley Technology Development Center (HVTDC), Lamothermic’s management noticed changes in their staff and daily operations immediately following an initial Lean 101 seminar conducted by HVTDC. “The very next day a number of staff members came up with ideas to re-arrange the machines and desks to reduce the distance the parts had to travel,” Steele remarked. “By re-arranging the tables and turning the machines around they can see where the parts are more readily.”
The state-of-the-art casting foundry began working with HVTDC in 2006 with a series of sales workshops. Through the workshops conducted by HVTDC’s Director of Sales, Ralph Brown, Lamothermic’s management learned how to look at their company’s structure, evaluate their success, why they lost quotes and bids, plus the return they were receiving on their advertising and marketing investments. After that series, they sought HVTDC’s expertise in ways to prevent the consistent, daily breakage of the ceramic molds they produced. “We needed help to determine where the breakage was happening and how to prevent the ongoing problem.”
Following the introduction to Lean 101, HVTDC introduced the staff to Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to look at the entire production process, think about each step, and ask such questions as how to fix the breakage step by step. Utilizing VSM, the staff examined how the products flowed from one production step to another and where the biggest problems occurred. They recognized that the middle of the process where the fragile mold is created was where a lot of breakage was occurring and where defects take place. “Since that time we’ve established an MRB, Materials Review Board, consisting of quality controllers, department supervisors and myself,” explains Steele. “We meet first thing every morning to review everything scrapped and reworked the day before, we find the problem and take care of the problem. This has made a big difference.”
That difference is noted one year later in that, “The backlog that was about $2.5M, has now doubled to $5M. We have raised our level of productivity from where we were shipping 400,000 pieces/month to where we are now shipping over 600,000 pieces/month.” Steele comments that, “The Value Stream Mapping worked out very well in two particular areas. We removed a shelf from one area and that allowed traffic to take a much shorter route. Plus we cut an opening in a wall that eliminated a lot of distance the product traveled as well.”
“By Value Stream Mapping our production line,” explains Steele, “we’ve seen very good success with our employees taking steps to make changes to prevent breakage without a lot of expenditure. It’s making a big difference in that it reduced the time our staff was spending moving molds from different points of production. The biggest impact is that it opened our staff’s minds as to how to make successful changes in how we are operating. Plus the staff trained in Value Stream have been bringing the techniques and methodologies to other areas of the plant.”
One of the biggest changes that occurred after their staff received Kaizen Training from HVTDC was that Lamothermic’s own Kaizen team built custom carts to move product from one area to another. “These carts are specially designed to eliminate a lot of double handling and damage to our fragile products. Initially they built a prototype out of wood and then built the finished carts out of metal that had a slightly different design and worked a little bit better. This really helped to eliminate the double handling of products which in turn naturally eliminated potential for damage.”
Management has noted the staff’s enthusiasms and contributions during the past year. So much so that they realized that employees have been creating their own Kaizen teams throughout the plant. “When a customer recently toured our facility to see how things are made, we saw that employees are creating their own teams because they see how it helps production. The culture of change has begun and it’s happening seamlessly without a lot of push by management.” The customer also mentioned that he overheard a conversation that some of the employees were having about how they were coming up with ideas, taking initiatives, and management was actually listening to their ideas and acknowledging their initiatives. The employees are obviously very pleased and delighted they are being heard and are being taken seriously by management.
Employee satisfaction is so high that over the past year Lamothermic has increased their numbers from 60 to 89. “HVTDC’s training of our supervisors made a big difference in how some of us now work with people, and how we can see different ways to handle various situations and people in conflict.” Another area impacted by the supervisor’s training is how the company now conducts their interview process for new employees. “It helped us add guidelines for managing our interviewing process better. It helped us to weed out applicants who were not appropriate, and gave us the tools to better explain to our employees the caliber of candidates we are really seeking.”
“Overall the most dramatic change,” summarizes Steele, “is that everyone is involved on a daily basis in evaluating how we produce our products, and almost everyone has ideas that are being listened to. Our staff feels more comfortable in coming to management with their ideas for making the production process better. The bottom line is that we’re all reaping the rewards.”
To learn more about HVTDC’s Lean 101 training, please contact Phyllis Levine at 845-896-6934x3001, via email at plevine@hvtdc.org, or visit www.hvtdc.org.