Breaking Through - The Edge
In 2005, I was asked to help a team reduce the changeover time of a painting operation at a ceiling tile manufacturing plant in Oregon. The approach I used was SMED – Single Minute Exchange of Die. The goal was to reduce the existing changeover time by 50% or more, while improving the safety of the work.
After training the team, we took a walk on the factory floor to observe a changeover in progress and see if we could generate any improvement ideas. As with most SMED events, we saw a ton of improvement opportunities related to the existing changeover and the team was excited they would be able to help everyone in the process.
Towards the end of the walk, we stopped at the quality testing station and saw something that didn’t look right to us. The Quality Technician was using a box knife to cut four 2-foot edges of the ceiling tile off by hand. It looked difficult, unsafe, and extremely inefficient. When we asked her more about it, she told us she was required to measure the color of the face and edges of the ceiling tiles. The only way to get the colorimeter to read the edge of the ceiling tile was to make these cuts, allowing the tester to be placed directly on the edges. She also told us it made her wrists hurt. On a break, I verified with plant leadership they were also very concerned about this requirement. It was their number one safety concern in the facility and a number of engineers had studied the issue with no practical solution.
Following the walk, the team went back to their meeting room and listed all of the improvement ideas they had. They then prioritized the ones they wanted to work on to reduce changeover time. During the next two days, many of the highest priority ideas were implemented and the team was extremely excited about the improvements they were able to make.
At a break, a mechanic on the team came up to me and asked if it would be ok for him to work on something outside of the prioritized list of improvements the team had identified. I could tell something was bothering him, so I asked him to tell me more about what he was thinking. “Adam, I can’t get that edge cutting process out of my mind. It’s not right that we are putting our people at risk. I think I have a solution, and if you give me an hour to work on it, I can come right back to the team to help out with the other efforts.”
Kaizen is a team sport, and the team needs to be aligned around what everyone is doing. I asked the team what they thought. They enthusiastically supported the mechanic’s efforts. So much so that one of the operators volunteered to help him work on his idea. We couldn’t wait to see what they would come up with.
About an hour and half later, both team members came back with grins a mile wide. They brought a contraption that looked like a standard vise with a two-foot wide angle iron attached to each jaw. Curious, we stopped our other work to watch a demonstration of their invention. They put a 2-foot ceiling tile into the vise vertically, with the edge of the tile in the jaws and closed the vise carefully. Then, with a swift tap, the ceiling tile broke off cleanly at the edge, across the entire 2-foot length. We were stunned. One of our team members stepped up and tried the next of the four edges, and it broke off just as cleanly. One by one, we all tried it and saw how quick and easy it was to break off the edges. Now, we gave it the ultimate test – we brought it to the Quality Technician and showed her how to use it. She easily broke off the edge and immediately gave the mechanic a hug in a show of gratitude. It was probably the only hug the mechanic ever got at the plant!
We were so proud, but knew we had to finish our other work and gain alignment from plant leadership that our new method would meet the quality testing requirements. During the rest of the Kaizen, we implemented as many of our improvement ideas as possible, then created an overall changeover procedure that we verified, practiced, and used to train the rest of the operators on the line. The changeover time had been reduced significantly, but we wouldn’t feel like we had won until we implemented the new edge breaking process. So, we decided to build a final report to win over the plant leadership.
We invited plant leadership to see the new changeover procedure, which the team demonstrated for them. Some of the leadership team even participated, to see for themselves how much easier and safer it had become. They were extremely pleased, but we had saved the best for last.
Our creative mechanic invited the Quality Technician to join him in front of the group of plant leaders. Then, another team member brought out the vise and handed a ceiling tile to the Quality Technician. She put it in the vise, gave it a tap, and the edge broke right off, as clean as could be. In my life, I have never seen a collective group of people’s jaws drop at the same time, but it happened right then. After they got over their initial shock, the Operations Manager said, “Let me try that.” He did, and got the same result.
Everyone wanted a turn, and when it was over, the Safety Manager said, “This has been our number one safety risk. We have spent over 6 months trying to solve it the conventional way and haven’t been able to do so. Your team worked together and solved it so quickly. We need more teams to help us solve our problems in this way. Thank you!” Then, she gave the mechanic the second hug he had ever received in the plant. After blushing, he admitted to the group that in all of his years working at the plant, he had never done anything as impactful as this. He also reminded everyone that this was a prototype, so there may be an improved way of doing the work. Many years later, the original vise was being used in the plant without a complaint.