Problem
The company is part of a multinational group operating in the medical field. Thanks in part to the Covid-19 pandemic, demand is growing rapidly. The company is making significant investments in its automated production lines for product assembly to meet its productivity and efficiency objectives.
The working methods of the plant personnel need to be upgraded to keep up with technological changes, to cut costs and delivery times, and to increase capacity.
Solution
Contract Manager sent in a temporary Operations Manager to head up the whole manufacturing area, with the following objectives:
- to take up the position of Manufacturing Manager
- to improve the efficiency of the manufacturing process, ensuring quality standards while respecting set cost targets
- to take an active part in the start-up of the new automated lines and to implement the resulting organizational changes
The temporary Operations Manager quickly adapted to the company environment and was well received by the plant staff, also thanks to the significant results obtained through the changes he made.
Results
The results may be summarised up as follows:
- Daily monitoring of production and improved performance of the existing automated lines: a 35% average increase in six months
- Completion of the start-up of the last automated line, working on a 7-day shift cycle, achieving project targets
- Alignment of shiftwork in the plastic component molding shop to match the workflow in the assembly unit and so reduce the build-up of semi-finished parts between units
- Completion of the implementation of the use of hand-held RF devices by operatives to collect shift production data. This is a necessary step in preparation for a future project to introduce process automation, production planning and data collection through use of SAP
- 10-15% reduction (and potentially greater) of WIP by moving from batch production (push) to demand-based production (pull)
- Labor costs and fixed and variable costs in the two quarters of the fiscal year all better than budgeted
- Design of the new manufacturing organizational structure, ready to be implemented by the new Head of Production.