Guest Column

Fundamentals for Success: Work with the Experts and Listen to the Voice of the Customer

~Dick Barry

Some time ago, I was invited to facilitate an internal team and lead a cross-functional Lean team at a very large aircraft plant. The plant level ‘customer’ was a facility that assembled wing sets for an outside ‘ultimate’ customer. The ultimate customer wanted a 14% production increase from the assembly plant which would create a major strain on their current ‘Batch & Queue’ processes. Under the circumstances, management believed meeting this increase would have been unrealistic.

Takt time was expressed in days and spaghetti diagrams were expressed in miles. Based on my observations, parts movement appeared to be frozen in time. Nothing moved! Informal WIP counts within the assembly plant showed both shortages and excesses. As a Lean practitioner observing several processes within a complex facility of approximately five million square feet under roof, I had to ask myself, “Where should I start?”

Then I remembered, “Begin with the end in mind!” and “Listen to the voice of the customer!” I knew I had to start with the final assembly plant and work with the experts who knew and worked the system. With their help a current ‘Value Stream Map’ was designed that included (silos) Purchasing, Machining, Processing and an Expediter department of water beetles who moved the raw material and finished parts from point-to-point within the system.

It became apparent that communication between the silos was non-existent; and someone had to step forward to manage the process flows.

A cross-functional team was formed to include people working in the fore mentioned silos along with several ancillary employees who supported the system. The first priority was to free up much needed space in the congested west high-bay. Congestion occurred when excessive amounts of large parts; such as skins, stringers and ribs were ‘pushed’ into the first phase of this assembly plant.

It became evident to me, team members had the Tribal Knowledge required to analyze problems within their silo; it’s just that they didn’t communicate together on their own to connect the dots that connected the flows between silos. We walked the processes starting with the ‘customer’ and worked our way back to the vendors. As the team communicated with everyone who touched the processes, a lean change took place transferring their knowledge to one another; thus creating a learning experience. 

The ‘customer’ assembly plant told the team they needed the large parts to arrive just-in-time without shortages or quality defects. For this reason, the team constructed a future state map. They focused on the development of a cross-functional Kanban System to ‘link & flow’ lower skins, lower stringers and ribs into the assembly plant. Kanbans tied to a Supermarket eliminated those stock shortages. Special ‘over-the-road’ fifty-five foot trailers were designed and tested in-accordance-with their model. This system offered a one-time WIP inventory cost reduction of $500,000; and was an important contributor to the anticipated ‘direct labor’ 900 hour overtime cost reduction.

All horizontal flows through the silos were accomplished, because people with a desire for improvement not only communicated with each other; they also solicited ideas from the experts, those who worked the processes. I expect their work will allow the plant to meet the requirements and expectations of the ‘ultimate’ customer. Management agreed!