Page 40 - MetalForming March 2013

Self-Directed Work Teams
day on different machines. In some cases, work in process would sit for days; as many as three jobs with the same start date would be scheduled for one setup person, with no time set aside for setup during the previous week.
Although the work was getting done, production moved slowly and ineffi- ciently. Rather than making required changes to synchronize the electronic schedule with actual shop-floor reali- ties, changes were being made ad-hoc, without communicating with the mas- ter schedulers.
The SDWT’s first decision: Improve the business on the front end to make processes more efficient on the shop floor. For starters, the team radically altered the way actual work flow and timing was synchronized with the mas- ter schedule and electronic systems. It developed a new master-schedule job- tracker/work-flow board, charting all jobs scheduled for six months out. Using the board, workers can see how long a
“Leading Self-Directed Work Teams: A Guide to Developing New Team Leader- ship Skills,” by Kimball Fisher, is widely cited as the SDWT “Bible.” The book pro- vided CSS with a much-needed road map to help break down the approach into steps and guide the company’s efforts.
job will take, which machines it will run on, how much setup time is needed and which operators are responsible for the job. Scheduling personnel receive alerts when conflicts or issues arise. The team also established a process to continu- ously provide feedback and changes to the master scheduler.
Before implementing the job-track- er/work-flow board, shop-floor workers typically would have to make schedul- ing changes to 50 percent of its jobs. Now, thanks to the new process, they’re making only minor changes to about 10 percent of the jobs.
Dozens of Process and Quality Improvements
In addition to establishing the cen- tral job tracker/work flow board as a central communication tool, the team implemented hundreds of other process and quality improvements. Examples include:
• Bringing some machines physi- cally closer together;

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MetalForming/March 2013
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