Diagnostics · Mechanical industry
Lean Manufacturing Audit: Find Out Where, How and How Much You Can Improve
Find out where, how and how much with the Kaizen Coach Audit Discovery: four hours on your lines, with your people.
How would you feel having a clear vision of the improvements that can still be made in your company? More optimistic and confident about the unknowns of the future?
And what if your employees shared the same vision? Would they feel more motivated to reach the new levels of performance? Probably yes.
When you look at your industrial performance data
You often wonder: are we really at 100% efficiency? Maybe we are running below 100.
But there are some operators who go even beyond 100: ah, if only they were all like him.
But what is the real 100% standard? Are we sure that the cycle times are right?
And if you then look at what prevents you from reaching 100, the matter gets complicated.
- Perhaps it is logistics, whose delays often force people to be moved around, so that in the end they are not in a position to reach 100.
- Maybe it is the warehouses: they are not really organised yet; some components needed to start the batch cannot be found, or maybe the supplier has not delivered them yet.
- Or it is the quality of the components being assembled, which is not always good and forces changes on the fly and production stops. Or it is our own processes that create scrap and force us to produce more than ordered to meet the quantities required by customers.
- Perhaps it is the training of the workers: even when the components are there and their quality is fine, if training was not done, or was done a few months ago, the right rhythm is missing and it takes time to get to 100.
- Perhaps it is how the work is organised and how the workstations are laid out: watching what the operators do, you see a lot of movement and a lot of time spent looking for what they need. They are not in the best possible conditions to work.
Those in charge do not have time to understand how to improve
Right now the heads of the departments cannot say how much and where things can be improved: they are too busy solving contingent problems.
They do not have the time to sit down, understand and draw up improvement plans: they must continuously manage the critical situations that pop up without warning. If they do not, deliveries are missed and customers complain.
And the continuous improvement staff? They are still learning the trade: they are the ones who prepare the indicators, the tables and the presentations.
But how can someone who until yesterday was learning theory from professors who have never seen a factory be today the real engine of improvement? In a few years, certainly, but now it is difficult.
In any case, most managers cannot really tell you how much could be improved, because psychologically it would mean admitting that they are not doing their utmost.
This kind of answer is more likely to come from someone outside your organisation, or from someone with the mindset of an entrepreneur or a top manager: that is, from you, who are reading this.
But how much more can we improve?
Many managers and entrepreneurs ask themselves the following questions, many times a day:
- How much can we improve efficiency if we organise ourselves better?
- How much less scrap can we make if we solve the quality problems?
- How many hours of overtime can we cut if we manage to be more productive?
- How much can we improve our level of customer service?
The indicators to improve in the mechanical industry
The mechanical industry has its own particular indicators, and within each company of the sector there are even more specific ones. These are the indicators that any mechanical company must relentlessly try to improve, every day.
Lead time
The time a unit of product actually takes to be produced. Measured as: total time from the start of the first process phase to the last completed phase.
Standard cycle time
The sum of the total times needed to make one unit of product. It may relate to the product alone, or also to the phases that take place before and after the unit is built.
Efficiency of assembly lines or cells
The ratio between the total time produced (units x standard time) and the total opening time of the production activity.
Productivity of assembly lines or cells
The ratio between the total time produced (units x standard time) and the specific time actually worked.
Work in progress
The value of semi-finished products and raw materials that have on average entered the production process in a given period. Measured as: the sum of the values of the quantities present on average along the production process in the period.
Kosu
The time it really takes to build one unit of product in a given period. Measured as: working time (paid hours) / number of units produced.
Scrap and defects
The number of defective pieces found during or at the end of a production process. Measured as: defective units found / total units produced.
Stock turns upstream of the process
The number of times components or raw materials are fully consumed, and replenished, in a given period of time.
Every company has its own indicators and its own objectives
Once its indicators are established and the performance achieved over a certain period is measured, every truly alive company regularly sets itself new goals and tries to reach them.
To be healthy, goals must meet a few criteria.
- Specific and written
- Measurable
- Possible
- Reachable with the available resources
- With a timeline for realisation
With numerical answers to these criteria you will see your people gather and motivate themselves around new goals, and renew their commitment to improve.
The tool
Developed by the consultants of Kaizen Coach International Ltd
Audit Discovery 4 Mechanical Industry©
A diagnostic tool that answers the questions above with numbers. With the Audit Discovery for the mechanical industry:
- You discover the improvement potential of your industrial processes
- You help your managers draw up a new plan to improve industrial performance
What is an audit?
An audit is a technical analysis of the quality of the processes in place, made by comparing the parameters of the processes to be analysed with the same parameters from best-in-class companies. This comparison produces a report that, for each point analysed, states the gap between the process analysed and the best in the industry.
How the lean manufacturing audit works
Premise: this type of audit was built on the many years of experience of our consultants in your industrial sector, and its method is covered by international copyright.
- Objectives and consultant. After agreeing on the objectives you want to achieve, we choose together the consultant best suited to your company. The consultant contacts the people you have designated and prepares with them the organisation of the audit day.
- Preparation. There are data and information to prepare and know in advance of the audit day.
- The audit day. We carry out a comprehensive analysis of your processes, with long visits to the production lines while they run, in direct contact with your operators and managers.
We look for the elements that today prevent performance from improving, some of which may still be unknown to your people. We build consensus and prepare, together with your people, a 90-day plan with the solutions most appropriate to your situation.
During the audit your employees are involved in a training process for the construction of a programme to improve industrial performance.
What you get from the lean manufacturing audit
- The list of feasible performance improvements
- The methodological plan to achieve the performance improvements
- A strategic vision project, in a 20 to 30 page document
- A plan of the Lean methodologies to implement over the next 90 days, aimed at the desired improvements
- The discovery of the cultural aspects contrary to the Lean philosophy, and the plan to correct them
- The road map for the cultural transformation of the company
- A frank discussion of all the cultural problems that can prevent the expected results
- The creation of a Value Stream Map of the future industrial vision of a process or product
At the end of the audit the results are shared with the Management Team, in a meeting presenting the work done, in which the feasible improvements identified and the reasons behind them are explained.
The two road maps you will receive
During the meeting two implementation road maps are presented: one for the improvements in industrial performance, one for the cultural and organisational improvements. You know that to achieve concrete and lasting results there is no other way than to transform the industrial processes, and that to do so it is also necessary to transform the company culture.
Road map of industrial performance improvements
Designed for
- Productivity
- Delivery times to customers
- Scrap reduction
- Improvement of other indicators chosen by you
States precisely
- The improvement activities needed to reach the expected results
- The timing of the activities
- The resources used in the transformation
- The necessary investment
Road map of the necessary and possible cultural improvements
Answers the questions
- How do I train our people so that they learn to lead improvement projects?
- How do I teach my managers to motivate the people they manage?
- Is it possible to regularly cut production costs by 20% and at the same time involve all employees positively?
- Is my company really putting into practice the principles of continuous improvement?
States precisely
- The organisational changes needed to consolidate the improvements
- The activities that help transform the company culture
- The human resources involved
- The necessary investment
For your managers, having built a road map of the improvements is an important reference for the daily organisation of their work, because:
- They will know the precise direction in which they and the company want to go
- They will know that there is an agreed sequence of implementation
- They will feel part of a team that shares the same goals
If you have already tried Lean and it did not work
It is possible that your company is already applying some continuous improvement methodologies that refer to Lean, but that these have not yet brought the expected results.
According to our many years of experience this is quite normal: 80% of Lean implementation projects fail, and in most cases the managers who promoted them cannot understand why.
With the Audit Discovery report you will also have the answers and the solutions to correct any Lean projects you have started and that are not yet working at their best.
We have a bet to offer you
The Audit Discovery could be free
It does not matter if, after the audit, you carry out the plan, or part of it, with one of our competitors and not with us: we bet that after seeing the quality of the information you receive from the Audit Discovery, you will be the one asking for our support.
We will not make any commercial proposal unless you expressly ask for it. And if after the audit you decide to continue with Kaizen Coach International Ltd, the cost of the audit will be deducted from the agreement that follows.
Free documentation
Receive the Audit Discovery documentation
How the audit is carried out, what you receive, and the detail of the two road maps.
Why choose the consultants of the Kaizen Coach Team
Our consultants have an average of 10 years of professional experience in the mechanical industry. Most of them have worked on corporate restructuring projects for medium-large companies and multinationals.
The Audit Discovery for your company will be conducted by a senior consultant of our team, that is, by one of the most experienced consultants available today.
The particular skills of one of our senior consultants are:
- Identifying precisely the most important areas of improvement, to obtain the performance gains that are possible
- Quantifying the possible performance gains
- Drawing up the plan of activities needed to reach the expected results
Who it is for, and who it is not for
Who it is for
The Audit Discovery is requested by managers and entrepreneurs who:
- Need to make performance improvements in a very short time
- Want to understand how far industrial performance could go
- Want to understand whether improving performance can improve margins
- Want their people to understand the gap between current performance and feasible performance
- Want to involve their people with numbers worked out together with experts
- Want to give their company a fresh start of vitality
Who it is not for
It is not for managers and entrepreneurs who believe their organisation is already giving its maximum, and who:
- Do not need double-digit percentage improvements in industrial performance
- Are not interested in further stimulating the search for improvements in their people
- Are already satisfied with the results their organisation is achieving
Four hours to know how much more you can improve
A senior consultant, on your lines, with your people. At the end, a report, two road maps and a 90-day plan.
Request the documentation