Offsite Manufacturing
Cabinet Shop Layout Improvement
Cabinet Shop Layout Improvement
With a full order book, a leading holiday home manufacturing company needed support from Develop Consulting to be able to increase capacity by unblocking some of their bottleneck processes, improve in-process quality and to reduce staff turnover in areas of high physical demand. There was also a lack of skilled cabinet makers available, so an alternative approach to staff utilisation was required.
Results
- A reduction in walking for the Furniture Loaders by over 50%, enabling them to take more care while loading the material and thus reducing damage and rework.
- 37% reduction in the time spent searching for drawings for the slotting process, reducing overtime in that process by 15 minutes per operator per day at a saving of £8,800 pa.
- A reduction in printing worth £20,600 pa.
- £93k annual resource cost reduction, gained through reducing the resource count by 2 heads and replacing 4 skilled operators with unskilled labour.
- Overall ROI of 2:1
Observations
Through process observation, process mapping and spaghetti diagrams, Develop Consulting were able to determine that the layout and output of the Cabinet Shop did not match the demand of the point of fit in the assembly lines. Large items that were picked with two on a barrow (wardrobes, kitchen cabinets, etc.) were being assembled at the furthest distance from point of fit, and smaller items with ten parts to a barrow were assembled opposite the point of fit. In essence, this set-up needed reversing.
Many non-value added tasks were being carried out by the cabinet makers, in an environment where the business was struggling to recruit skilled tradesmen.
Objectives
With a full order book, Develop Consulting were asked to support to increase capacity by unblocking some of their bottleneck processes, improve in-process quality and to reduce staff turnover in areas of high physical demand. There was also a lack of skilled cabinet makers available, so an alternative approach to staff utilisation was required.
Actions
By improving the entire layout of the Cabinet Shop and changing the order of material from the Machine Shop, it became possible to supply the Furniture Loaders with the material closer to its point of use, with the barrows that contained one or two items built close to load, and those with a full batch of ten assembled further away (less returns of a greater distance).
With the introduction of digital drawings linked to an alpha-numerical index, we were able to take away the reams of paper drawings which were time consuming to go through, further speeding up the process and reducing delays to the Cabinet Shop.
Through process mapping and observation, we identified the non-value-added work tasks and removed these from the skilled cabinet makers, creating new processes for unskilled labour that fed directly into the skilled elements of the department.
