Cellular Manufacturing

[mattf]

I saw David wanted to get into this topic in the QRM thread, so I thought I'd do some research on my own to see what it really was. My research brought up some broad ideas, but nothing specific.

While lean is all about minimizing waste, cellular is the process to arranges factory floor labor into skilled teams who manufacture complete products or complex components in a kind of semi-autonomous way. In a way you can give the example of McDonald's being a proponent of cellular. Usually they have individuals who know how to do multiple tasks. So, for example, one person might know how to make the burgers and the fries, while someone else is in charge of keeping the kitchen clean as well as being the cash register.

With this idea, I assume that you have many people that can do a multitude of tasks. If implemented correctly you won't need to hire as many people because you have workers that can transfer from one section to another seamlessly. Such an idea is a great tool within lean because of the fact that if you do the same work with less people you are cutting the waste!

In the print industry, however, its a bit hard in my opinion to achieve this feat. I'll make the company I work for an example. We have a 5C, 6C, 2C and 1C presses. The 2C and 1C can be manned by 1 person each, while the 5 and 6 need a feeder and a pressman. They CAN run 1 person on those machines, but it isn't recommended. There is one person for the diecutter, one person for stock room and inventory, one person for shipping, six people for finishing, two deal with hand finishing, four deal with bindery and finally one person who does the majority of the pre-press and finishing cutting.

This is just an example, but what you might see clearly from the start of this is that there really isn't much room to cut back on workers. Sure, our stock room guy can run a press, can cut paper as well as work some of the bindery equipment, but he is dealing with paper coming in all the time. His time is very much stretched to what he can do at this moment. Once some lean practices are in place he probably will be able to handle more, but at this point in time he cannot.

Its very hard to get people to know multiple tasks within a medium-sized print company. A good place to cut also just by the amount of workers in my example is finishing. You have two workers within hand finishing and inspection while there are four others running bindery machines. During our slow time its hard for them to do much, but now with work coming in they are running their machines constantly.

To give an example, lets say we want to use cellular manufacturing within the company I work for. We see that there is too many people within bindery and that if we taught the main cutter some of the machines within bindery he could help out within bindery during his downtime. All well and good, but if there is a high amount of work being pushed through you have one person trying to get the preliminary cutting done, the finishing cutting done as well as helping out within the other finishing and bindery functions of the plant. To me, there is only so much you can cut before it starts to take its toll on the workers. Also within a print company, there is only so much you can push on a person to do before they aren't able to handle anything else.

I might be off on my analysis, but I just thought it would be good to start up the conversation to get some input on the whole idea of cellular manufacturing.

 

[David Dodd]

Cellular Manufacturing and Product Families

Cellular Manufacturing and Product Families

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is an important lean technique, and I'm glad that mattf has introduced the topic. CM is also a technique/tool that cannot be adequately described in one post. So, I won't even try to do that. Instead, I'll focus on one major aspect of CM.

Before I do that, though, I want to reiterate a critical point about lean. Some people who read Matt's post may misinterpret what he wrote and assume that the primary goal of lean is to reduce the number of production employees. The objective of lean is to eliminate waste, not people. If you read very many of the lean case studies that are now available, you'll see that many of the companies that have been most successful with lean began their lean efforts by assuring their employees that no one would lose his/her job because of the improvements brought about by lean. This is critical because you won't get much support for lean from employees who are afraid that they will be downsized.

OK, now back to CM. The starting point for determining how to implement CM (or whether it's even appropriate) is to understand the products you produce in manufacturing terms. In printing, we can be inclined to say that CM won't work because every job is different. That's certainly true if you consider editoral content and exclude reorders. But it's not really true from a manufacturing perspective. For example, if your company produces four-color saddle-stitched booklets, it's likely that most (if not all) of those booklets require the same manufacturing processes. The editoral content, the stock used, the order quantity, and the number of pages will vary, but the basic manufacturing steps won't. If you have a sufficient volume of four-color saddle-stitched booklets, you have the basis for creating a production cell that is dedicated to this product.

Designing effective production cells requires a fair amount of analysis and judgment. It's extremely company-specific. And cross-training is an essential part of CM. When used correctly, CM can enable better quality, less waste, and improved flow (faster throughput).

There's much more to talk about when it comes to CM. Hopefully, this will get us started.

 

[mattf]

Cellular manufacturing (CM) is an important lean technique, and I'm glad that mattf has introduced the topic. CM is also a technique/tool that cannot be adequately described in one post. So, I won't even try to do that. Instead, I'll focus on one major aspect of CM.

Before I do that, though, I want to reiterate a critical point about lean. Some people who read Matt's post may misinterpret what he wrote and assume that the primary goal of lean is to reduce the number of production employees. The objective of lean is to eliminate waste, not people. If you read very many of the lean case studies that are now available, you'll see that many of the companies that have been most successful with lean began their lean efforts by assuring their employees that no one would lose his/her job because of the improvements brought about by lean. This is critical because you won't get much support for lean from employees who are afraid that they will be downsized.

OK, now back to CM. The starting point for determining how to implement CM (or whether it's even appropriate) is to understand the products you produce in manufacturing terms. In printing, we can be inclined to say that CM won't work because every job is different. That's certainly true if you consider editoral content and exclude reorders. But it's not really true from a manufacturing perspective. For example, if your company produces four-color saddle-stitched booklets, it's likely that most (if not all) of those booklets require the same manufacturing processes. The editoral content, the stock used, the order quantity, and the number of pages will vary, but the basic manufacturing steps won't. If you have a sufficient volume of four-color saddle-stitched booklets, you have the basis for creating a production cell that is dedicated to this product.

Designing effective production cells requires a fair amount of analysis and judgment. It's extremely company-specific. And cross-training is an essential part of CM. When used correctly, CM can enable better quality, less waste, and improved flow (faster throughput).

There's much more to talk about when it comes to CM. Hopefully, this will get us started.

Yeah, my apologize for the potential misunderstanding of "cutting employees" I might have unknowingly pushed along, I never meant any of that. By cut I meant trying to reduce the strain you have on certain areas, whether that be process or man hours etc, that might be put on the specific section day by day.

Waste, for example, in my company for the bindery is that there is a Bindery Foreman and three bindery people who work the equipment. Some of the workers know how to operate some of the machinery, some do not. If an individual is out on vacation/sick day etc. the rest of the team might not know how to operate a specific bindery machine because that individual is out. The Bindery Foreman of course knows how to operate all the machines, but that isn't his job. He is the Foreman, so his main task is to manage the bindery section.

If you used cellular manufacturing techniques within bindery every individual would know how to run all the machines. This helps production because no matter who is there someone is guaranteed to know how to operate the equipment.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

The objective of lean is to eliminate waste, not people. If you read very many of the lean case studies that are now available, you'll see that many of the companies that have been most successful with lean began their lean efforts by assuring their employees that no one would lose his/her job because of the improvements brought about by lean.

Reality check. I work for a company that is very much into Lean practices. If work is reorganized and then less people are required, then people are gone. Having people stand around with no work to do is waste. Yes the whole point of Lean is to elimiante waste and the reality is that that also includes people who are not needed. That is the fact of Lean life. Companies might not want to say in case studies that people are going but that is the goal of managers. They want to reduce head count and they use Lean as a method to do it.

It is used to reduce people and then to make the work as effective as possible for those people who are left.

 

[eastppress]

David, you are correct that this is more than a one-post description of Cellular Manufacturing. You are definately in the right direction about analyzing the processes and flow and sufficient volume to support a single production line. Of course we have varieties of jobs in most cases that require safety stock and redirected or alternative manufacturing path. Using automated stock movers could reduce the waste of a paper receiver, JIT such as upstream order projections and processing and integration with vendors can reduce inventories and warehouse space as well as damaged stock, and on and on it goes.
Rearranging the physical plant to allow immediate transfer of stock from press to post-press is something that should be studied. To 'do it as we've always done it' with a lot of nay-saying will not drive out waste. Those who perceive Lean as overhead burdened do not understand the proper execution of lean. The opportunities to reduce waste through Lean are phenominal. I was involved with a major company who increased its stock price by 10-fold over 3-1/2 years and their stock price is still 11 fold in this market.

 

[David Dodd]

Reality check. I work for a company that is very much into Lean practices. If work is reorganized and then less people are required, then people are gone. Having people stand around with no work to do is waste. Yes the whole point of Lean is to elimiante waste and the reality is that that also includes people who are not needed. That is the fact of Lean life. Companies might not want to say in case studies that people are going but that is the goal of managers. They want to reduce head count and they use Lean as a method to do it.

It is used to reduce people and then to make the work as effective as possible for those people who are left.

Erik,

I have no doubt that your experience is reflective of what some companies do under the banner of lean. I can't and won't deny that lean can be used as a way to cut costs (reduce headcount, etc.). But that approach is short-sighted and often self-defeating. It's really hard to "shrink" your way to prosperity. If you think about it for a moment, one of the major objectives of any process improvement methodology - whether it's lean, Six Sigma, TQM/Deming, or process reengineering - is to reduce the volume of resources (time, people, equipment, facilities) that are required to perform business processes. In other words, your objective is to create idle production capacity. Idle production capacity can be viewed in one of two basic ways. The short-sighted view is to treat the idle capacity as "excessive capacity" and take action to eliminate it. The much better view is to treat the newly created capacity as a resource for growth. In the long term, of course, production capacity must be matched with market demand. If a company has idle capacity and really has no opportunities for growth, then the company may have no choice but to eliminate the "excess" capacity. But this is (or at least should be) the last resort.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

Erik,

If you think about it for a moment, one of the major objectives of any process improvement methodology - whether it's lean, Six Sigma, TQM/Deming, or process reengineering - is to reduce the volume of resources (time, people, equipment, facilities) that are required to perform business processes.

My view is that I think you are naive on this issue. It would be nice to think that efforts to improve processes will not affect labour but history shows that it is quite a different situation. Labour is always replaced by more efficient and more capable processes. Your statement above even supports that.

In an environment of growth, the affect on labour is not so bad and can be even positive. In an environment like we have now where growth for manufacturers and especially for printers is zero to negative, one can be sure that improvements in efficiency there will result in the loss of workers.

It is a War. Not only a war on waste but a war for survival and there will be causualties. There is little point to sugar coat the fact. One can't have a long term view is you do not exist in the near future.

Also growth does not come by being more efficient. It comes by supplying products that are in demand better than the competition can, which can require innovation in products and processes. It is tough for any company to get the right balance.

 

[mattf]

My view is that I think you are naive on this issue. It would be nice to think that efforts to improve processes will not affect labour but history shows that it is quite a different situation. Labour is always replaced by more efficient and more capable processes. Your statement above even supports that.

In an environment of growth, the affect on labour is not so bad and can be even positive. In an environment like we have now where growth for manufacturers and especially for printers is zero to negative, one can be sure that improvements in efficiency there will result in the loss of workers.

It is a War. Not only a war on waste but a war for survival and there will be causualties. There is little point to sugar coat the fact. One can't have a long term view is you do not exist in the near future.

Also growth does not come by being more efficient. It comes by supplying products that are in demand better than the competition can, which can require innovation in products and processes. It is tough for any company to get the right balance.

I understand the concept of being better than the competition. I also believe in order to improve efficiency you change how people think so to eliminate waste as well as improve the process so to improve quality; turnarounds and capacities.

Of course, in certain situations you are going to need to eliminate employees if they are waste. That happens though in extreme cases. If you make a bindery efficient with only two workers and there are four there currently, most companies would try to find a place for them before just giving them the boot. Trying to use their skills in other areas I would believe would be a better use of resources.

Extreme cases such as economic downturn or stubborn workers who don't want to learn something new is of course a great example of waste within workers. If you cannot afford to have so many people because the company isn't earning enough money, you have to cut somewhere. Same with trying to reorganize workers. If a worker who worked in the bindery department is asked to work on a diecutter and refuses, there is only so much patience management has for that individual.

A great example of improved processes vs. employees is Brown Printing, I've given this example within another thread. Brown bought DALiM MiSTRAL, a pre-press software, cut their pre-press division from over 100 people to 4. They saw an improved process and didn't need those people, so what else can they do? Of course, this is an extreme example because of the companies size compared to smaller companies, but the idea is the same.

I think we can all agree that eliminating employees is not the most positive idea when thinking about cellular manufacturing, but at times it does happen. However, I think we all can also agree that most of the time seeking alternative solutions to improving the processes of a company usually comes first before jobs are cut.

 

[David Dodd]

Identifying Product Families - The Product-Process Matrix

Identifying Product Families - The Product-Process Matrix

In an earlier post, I said that the starting point for determining how to implement cellular manufacturing (or whether it's appropriate for your company) is to understand the products you produce in manufacturing terms. A manufacturing cell is a group of machines and manual work centers that are located in close proximity to each other and arranged according to product routing. The idea is to enable the products to flow easily through the cell with a minimum of movement between manufacturing steps. A cell is dedicated to producing a family of products that require similar manufacturing processes, the aim being to complete the production of the products from start to finish withing the cell.

So, the first step in evaluating whether cellular manufacturing is appropriate for your company is to determine whether you have one or more product families that could provide the basis for one or more manufacturing cells. One tool that is useful for performing this analysis is a Product-Process Matrix, and I've attached a PDF file that contains a highly simplified example.

You can create a Product-Process Matrix using Excel or another spreadsheet program. The first two columns of the matrix are for Job Number and Product Description. The balance of the columns are used for the manufacturing processes that your company performs. Each row of the matrix is for an individual job. I usually suggest that you begin the analysis using the jobs you produced in an "average" month. For each job, place an "X" in each cell that relates to a manufacturing process the job required. The top portion of the matrix in the example shows what a matrix for ten jobs might look like.

Now rearrange the matrix so that jobs with common manufacturing steps are grouped together. The bottom part of the example matrix shows how this might look, and the shaded area identifies a group of jobs/products that have common manufacturing processes. That's a product family. If you produce a sufficient volume of any product family, you have the basis for a manufacturing cell.

By the way, it is not necessary that every product in a product family have exactly the same manufacturing processes. For example, suppose that you have two products that each require seven manufacturing processes. Six of those processes are the same, but the seventh differs. It may still be possible to include both of these products in the same product family for cellular manufacturing purposes.