Simple Steps to Lean Mold Manufacturing
Apr. 20, 2006
So why is Makino talking to you about lean? Obviously,
you all know that Makino is a machine tool builder. We do see the die/mold
industry as a major market of ours, and we want to see your businesses prosper.
That's part of the relationship between Makino and our customers; we want to
grow together. We know that global competitiveness has become more and more of
an issue as overseas and other market labor is low cost and has presented
problems. One of the ways to achieve global competitiveness and to achieve this
prosperity is to embrace a manufacturing concept such as lean, because that
will reduce your cost and increase your profitability.
All of you know us as a high-performance machine tool builder. We make machines specifically for the
die/mold industry with our high-speed finishing machines and EDM products. But
the reason we're talking to you about lean this morning is because our machine
technologies do fit into lean concepts. With the technological advancements of
our die/mold machine tools, you are removing waste from the manufacturing
process, and that's really what lean manufacturing is all about removing waste
so you can make a better mold at a lower cost and deliver it in less time. To stay
true to the theme of lean manufacturing, I'll quit wasting time with my
introduction and move onto the presentation.
Our agenda this morning will cover a few key topics and I want to keep this as practical as possible for all
of you. First of all, I want to talk about how to recognize if your business
needs and can benefit from lean manufacturing. Next, I will discuss some basic
fundamentals of lean. As you all know, lean is not a new concept; you've heard
about it and perhaps have read about it for several years, but it's a concept
that's stayed around and continues to be strong. It's helped many companies
improve their business.
How do you begin a lean initiative? We will discuss some basic steps. And then at the very end, I've
created a small checklist and I will ask you to go out in your shop this afternoon
or tomorrow or very soon to complete this simple checklist and evaluate where
your operation might be in regard to lean manufacturing and if you can
benefit.
Questioning how lean applies to your operation
Everybody's heard of lean but, really, how does that apply to mold manufacturing in your business? I'd like to
talk about some of the signs that you might see in your own operation that
might indicate that you can improve your business by embracing some of the
principles of lean. I've put together a little checklist here and we'll just go
down through these very quickly.
Number one, have you missed any lead times lately? Your revenue and profit is it growing, is it staying the
same or is it decreasing?
The percentage of labor cost and the total cost of building a mold is it going up or is it staying the
same? For companies that are embracing lean, the amount of labor content and
the total cost of their mold is decreasing. We'll look at some numbers later
on.
Is there difficulty in managing accounts payable? Are your traditional business and manufacturing
processes showing signs of improvement, or staying the same?
A few more signs that you may need to get lean include: How does your unplanned overtime hours look is it
increasing, staying the same? That could be an indicator. Unplanned equipment
downtime, reworking the warranty issues; are these issues that you're dealing
with on a daily, or weekly, basis?
Do you have excessive work-in-progress? One of the major implications of lean manufacturing is to
make substantial reductions in your inventory expense and cost. Concerning employee
turnover; are there issues around that?
Some of these things on the checklist are that I'm asking you to think about might indicate that lean
concepts can help you improve your business.