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Manufacturing in a lean way is a way of removing waste in several forms, such as time and materials, to save on business costs. In the metal industry, lean manufacturing would focus on the processing being as efficient as possible and as little metal being wasted as possible. The main points of lean manufacturing dictate that any waste produced should be kept at a minimum. Secondly, there should be a value stream, where the whole process of the production of the product, with the suppliers and the consumer, should be one entity, and finally, requirements in the market should be connected to manufacturing.

Continuous Product Flow

Lean manufacturing touts continuous product flow. The teams and machinery are located in work cells, using a process called cellular manufacturing, wherein products are manufactured entirely in these cells. Each process is performed in its own cell. This system lessens wait and handling of materials. Lean manufacturing promotes just-in-time (JIT) strategy for inventories. JIT removes inventory by only making parts when they are necessary. Establishing teams that can do multiple functions and have multiple abilities is also a function of lean manufacturing. It essentially is moving away from the mass-production, production line environment.

Using Bad Times to Grow

Amid these financially difficult times, businesses should take the opportunity to work on honing the skills of their employees as well as their manufacturing processes including speeding up processes. A significant number lie inactive and wait for business to improve – ultimately laying-off employees. Instead, they should find an opportunity and capitalize on the current situation – to go to other business’ locations and even customer’s locations to see what they are doing to stay lean or become leaner. Businesses and people learn from each other. You have the chance to learn if there are procedural steps in a process that could be disposed of, to save your clients money and time. Search for methods to advance the quality of a product. Offer training opportunities to staff to make them feel more a part of the team.

Cost savings must be implemented but the quality of the product must be maintained. Getting ideas from employees on how to save on costs is crucial. They can determine how to reduce wastes on the materials being used to formulate a product as well as when to shut down machinery when it is not needed.

One company in the metal industry that takes a lean manufacturing approach is Maloya. Their lean approach makes them more efficient and also helps in them being green. They recycle any metal not used. In 2007 they received a DOL Lean Workforce Training Grant. Maloya produced a product line of heaters. Some of the product components only had a “touch time” of one hour, which means it only took an hour to make, but it still took two weeks from order to shipment for product fulfillment. By using lean tools, they analyzed the situation to discover how to remove the non-value add pieces in the process that caused delay. They also did value stream mapping and improved their value stream design. They implemented the cellular work centers and minimized material handling times through the use of shadow boards to organize employee tools. By reorganizing raw material and component staging locations they were also able to improve the flow of work.

Value Stream Mapping

Value Stream Mapping is another tool in lean manufacturing. It helps to show what is needed to get a product to a customer and how materials are flowing. The person creating the map can look for improvements in the process and analyze the material flow. Processes should be categorized into three groups: non-value add but needed, value add, and waste.

Advantages of Lean

An advantage of utilizing lean manufacturing in a metal fabrication environment includes waste minimization. This results in the lessening of costs to the business. The flow of cash will be quicker and the cycles of production will become shorter. Not as many workers will be needed to perform certain jobs. Inventories can be maintained at a minimum level. Equipment can be utilized at a more efficient level and utilized more often and perform more manufacturing jobs. The quality of service toward customers will improve and additionally, products will gain in quality. Due to all of these improvements, business expansion and profits will grow due to lean manufacturing implementation.

Reto Hug is President of Maloya Laser which focuses on complex Metal Fabrication and laser cutting technologies using highly specialized laser systems for aerospace, medical, machinery, scientific and transportation requirements.

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