Pick It Up and Move It
I was an early Lean practitioner at Armstrong World Industries. I’d spend a week with a production and maintenance team on a production line, helping them implement improvements to safety, quality, productivity, and customer service. At the end of the week, we’d give a tour of our changes. Because of our numerous successes, I was requested to help many of our manufacturing sites around the world.
Macon Georgia was our largest ceiling tile manufacturing plant, with the capability to produce ½ billion square feet of ceiling tile annually. I was invited to help them with a critical production problem. They were experiencing a high rate of jams. When a jam occurs, operators have to clear material off the line as fast as possible, or further downtime and damage will occur. This creates safety and quality risk. The plant manager told me they had an average of 9 jams on the line every day. He wanted my help to reduce them to zero.
I told him I would need a very capable and qualified team of operators, mechanics, and supervisors. I also needed free reign to make any changes we saw fit, without waiting for approval. He agreed and organized a “Dream Team” for me.
On the first day of our Kaizen event, we toured the line, looking for the major locations where jams were occurring. The highest jam location was at the Flipper-Stacker and the conveyer leading up to it. This equipment looked like a Ferris Wheel. It flipped every other tile, to stack them face to face and back-to-back. Then, after being flipped, they traveled to a back stop, which lined up the tile edges and dropped them into a stacking device.
We noticed the tiles were entering the flipper portion on an angle. The conveyers leading up to the flipper were trying to straighten the tiles, but because there wasn’t much room between the flipper and the prior inspection station, the tiles couldn’t straighten out. How were we going to deal with that? Then, I asked, “What would it take to move the inspection station?” The team looked at me as if I had come from another planet. Someone asked, “How can we move the inspection station? There are conveyers, lighting, power, and other critical equipment that would have to be moved.” I said, “If we want to reduce jams to zero, we’ll have to.”
We started planning the mechanical and electrical work that would have to be accomplished to safely move the inspection station the 30 feet away from the flipper. We knew we could move the mechanical portion during the day, but we couldn’t get the overhead lights moved until the following day. The inspectors needed proper lighting to identify defects on the face of the tiles that went by at a rapid rate. While the team started dismantling the inspection station, I went to the store to buy temporary lights.
When I returned, we were ready to remove conveyers and relocate the inspection station. The day shift crew helped us and believed in what we were doing. We set up the temporary lights and reconnected all components of the line. The line started back up and we adjusted the conveyer rollers and guides. The tiles were now entering the flipper more squarely. After a few hours, we had the line running better than it had in the past. But we still didn’t have the permanent lights installed.
After the team went home, I stayed to talk with the evening crew. They had no idea what we had done, so I knew I needed to explain our changes and our thinking. And tell them about the lighting that would be relocated the next day.
We met in a space that was designed for six people. There must have been fourteen crew members in the room and they didn’t look happy. I explained what we had done and why we did it. After a few minutes of discussion, one of the crew said, “You could sell me a car. I truly believe you did what you did for the right reasons.” Then, he smiled and gave me a pat on the back. I thanked everyone for being patient with us and encouraged them to hang in there until the permanent lights were relocated.
The next morning, I arrived at the plant early and was told the line had been running very well overnight. This was great news. Now, we had to get the electricians to move the lights in a way that wouldn’t disrupt the production line. They planned out their work and were able to move everything without causing much downtime. We continued to tweak the line and by the end of the day, we had tiles well-spaced and squarely entering the flipper. This was a major breakthrough, but we weren’t done. Now we had to improve the performance of the stacker. That story could stand on its own, but suffice it to say we fabricated some new brackets and the tiles stopped jamming there too.
At the end of the day, I met with the evening crew again to show them what we had done. The crew member who patted me on the back gave me a bear hug and told me he appreciated I kept my word.
By the end of the week, we made many other improvements and welded everything in place, so the crew wouldn’t have to worry about jams at the flipper and stacker again. We didn’t get to zero jams, but we got pretty close. We also proved it sometimes takes drastic measures to accomplish a goal. But, with proper support and resources, you can accomplish almost anything.