Circuits Assembly - December 2007 - (Page 40)

Lean Manufacturing Linking Tactics with Strategy How to determine what you will work on, and what you won’t. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford o have an effective business improvement system, an organization must ensure all process improvements aimed at waste elimination are closely tied to the company’s overarching business goals. This means linking individual action plans to company strategy – with every improvement contributing to the strategic objectives such as improved customer satisfaction, growth and return on investment. Leaders at all levels are responsible for deploying the company’s strategy through the organization to the action plan level – ensuring that employees can clearly link their objectives to the company’s strategic goals. In a Lean enterprise, action plan development and execution is a scientific process through which teams make changes to existing processes to drive improvements. An action plan is a commitment to making change. It determines how, and if, each improvement initiative will support the strategy. In addition to listing specific changes, it has a defined outcome in mind. It is time-bounded, attainable, results-oriented and has a measurable outcome that can be checked and adjusted. Further, it requires the dedication of the right people, in the right quantity, with the right skills, for the right amount of time. To develop a solid action plan, teams must first work to fully understand the problem, determining: • The problem’s causes, which may include one or more of the eight types of waste: excess inventory, transportation, motion, waiting, over-processing, defects, overproduction and unused creativity. • The problem’s effect on the customer, team and business. • The desired outcome of the action plan: what the team wants to achieve and how it will impact the customer, team and overall business. • Who should be involved in plan development. • Who is responsible for plan deployment. • How long it should take to achieve the goal. For each action plan, a balance of measures and targets is needed. Ideally, daily progress should be measured in the areas of quality, delivery, inventory productivity and morale, in addition to safety. Lean practitioners typically rely on value stream mapping to develop action plans. A core Lean tool, value stream mapping enables people to see opportunities for improvement. It involves the creation of a diagram that clearly depicts the flow of materials and information needed to take a product from order to delivery. Developed in a cross-functional team-based workshop environment, value stream mapping enables employees to plot the current state, create a model of the future state, and develop an action plan to get there. It prioritizes what the team will work on and deprioritizes what the team will not work on – ensuring all improvements support the company’s strategic goals, as quickly as possible and in a sustainable way. While Lean disciples agree everything can be improved, it’s unrealistic to think that organizations have the time or resources available to improve everything, all the time. Therefore, it’s important to focus resources on the things that will quickly move the company closer to achieving its long-term objectives. My October column talked about visual systems. Value stream mapping is an excellent example of an effective visual system. As Mike Rother and John Shook of the Lean Enterprise Institute discuss in their Shingo Prize-winning book, Learning to See, by using a workshop and a simple tool, people learn to see the value stream: all the processes required to bring a product from concept to launch, from order to delivery. In essence, value stream mapping is a simple way of communicating the value stream to employees. It’s meant to inspire those involved in the change. Value stream mapping uses two maps. One shows the current state, the other, the team’s goal: a higher level of performance that will deliver results in support of the company’s overall strategy (Figure 1). A workshop is the initial forum for value stream mapping. The workshop typically involves management and subject matter experts. Celestica often includes operations, supply chain management and customers in the Lean transformation. For a large-scale transformation, we may include every function that touches the end-to-end process, including representatives from logistics and the supply base. Three considerations determine who is involved in value stream mapping: • Where the most impactful bottlenecks reside. • Where the most significant breakthroughs are required. • Where the greatest opportunities for improvement exist. Once the team is established, the first stage of value stream mapping is to understand which operations or processes require a breakthrough, or significant transformation. We consider these areas the bottlenecks, and the action plan is developed to drive breakthroughs in these areas. Once we understand the current state, we can then T Robert Hemmant is global Lean architect at Celestica (celestica.com). His column appears bimonthly. 40 Circuits Assembly DECEMBER 2007 circuitsassembly.com http://celestica.com http://celestica.com http://circuitsassembly.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Circuits Assembly - December 2007

Circuits Assembly - December 2007 Contents Caveat Lector Industry News Market Watch Talking Heads Global Sourcing Screen Printing Better Manufacturing Metalization Options for COB Assembly A Test Comparison of SAC and Non-SAC Pb-Free Solders An A-to-Z Guide to X-Ray Inspection BEST: A ‘Funky Chicken’ with an EMS Niche Tech Tips Wave Soldering Process Doctor Pb-Free Lessons Learned Getting Lean Eastern Approaches Product Spotlight Ad Index Assembly Insider Technical Abstracts

Circuits Assembly - December 2007

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