Introduction of Lean in Car Industry Supplier Environment
STARTING POINT; CLIENT NEEDS:
Car industry has always been a pioneering efficient plant management. It is not a coincidence that Lean Management has also started from car industry. Top management of one of the car industry supplier companies of East-Hungary, employing ~500 employees, started to hear more and more about Lean. While visiting other plants, they were also discovering different and more efficient solutions coming from Lean Management. They decided to get to know more of this philosophy, methodology and tools…
Development Concept:
Milestones during Lean Introduction:
- working out a Lean introduction plan together with top management
- preparation of top management for the support role during the introduction period: communication plan and sponsoring through management
- theoretical and practical training of internal Lean specialists responsible for Lean developments in-house
- reaching measurable results during the first 6-9 months of the introduction!!!
- making sure blue-collar workers also understand the concept of Lean Management; the aim was to enable them to help through the work of Lean specialists in development initiatives; there were also possibilities opening up through the ‘idea box system
- development of an internal Lean training programme, and training internal Lean trainers: the aim was to train people within the company to further train employees within the organisation.
Results throughout Lean introduction:
- cleaning up 190 m2 production area
- Introduction of Kanban for certain core materials and semi-finished products
- reduction of semi-finished products stock (WIP) worth ~170.000 EUR
- reduction of tool replacement time from 60 minutes to 30 minutes
- hard savings of ~80.000 EUR/year through productivity increase (introduction of cell-based productions)
- hard savings of ~75.000 EUR/year through waste reduction
- launching self-initiated maintenance
- introduction of 5S
