Company: Innovio Films
Sector: Process Industries – Manufacturing and Packaging
Key Tools or Services; Implementation – SMED (Changeover reduction/Output Improvement), Problem solving
Results:
- Factory waste reduced by 23%.
- Short maintenance stop duration halved.
- Average colour change time reduced by 33%.
- Demonstrated a sustained increase in m/c running speeds of 5%.
Project Overview
Following the success of a series of Picme facilitated activities in reducing factory waste levels, a shop floor based, cross functional team was set-up to look at increasing throughput in the bottleneck area of the plant. Structured data analysis identified maintenance stops, colour changes and machines not achieving target running speeds as being the main causes of lost capacity.
The team were facilitated through the application of SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) principles to both maintenance stops and colour changes. The resulting standardised processes developed by the team reduced maintenance stop duration by 50% and average colour change time by 33%.
Problem solving carried out by the team highlighted that the lack of a robust monitoring and feedback system for machine speed was resulting in machines not achieving target speeds. By implementing a simple visual management system, the team demonstrated an increase in average machine running speed of around 5%.