Principles for improving the production process

What questions will you find answers to in this article:

• Why To CEO Should we listen to the workers?
• How to encourage staff to improve their work?
• What practical tools are there to improve production efficiency?

You will also read:

• How did the working group solve the problem with defects at the VSMPO-Avisma corporation?
• Why has the total production cycle time at the Kaluga Automotive Electrical Equipment Plant decreased?
• Expert advice: how to implement kaizen in five days (commentary by Michael Vader)?

Before assembling the engine, the engine armature is balanced to eliminate vibrations - pieces of paste are attached, which are broken off from the whole piece, like plasticine.

Periodic work is an activity that is not included in each cycle of manufacturing or processing a part: control, changing tools, oil, receiving parts, materials in storerooms, cleaning the workplace, etc.

For production to operate efficiently, it is not enough to purchase equipment and establish production technology. The main part of the production process is the work of personnel. If you can not only teach people to perform their daily routine work efficiently, but also interest them in constantly improving their performance results, then your production will work smoothly and efficiently. It is important to choose the right control technology.

Western management methods recommend standardizing processes, describing them in regulations and communicating them strictly “from top to bottom” to staff. But such methods almost exclude feedback from the manager to the people. As a result, the General Director does not often visit production and does not consider it necessary to listen to the opinions of workers or technical personnel. As a result, many production processes are inefficient, and it does not occur to a worker or specialist that he has the power to change the situation. For example, the machine button is located under the worker right hand and in order to perform the operation, he has to turn around, spending about a minute on the whole process. On the scale of an entire enterprise, this is a significant time investment. If the button is moved under left hand, the procedure will take no more than 15 seconds. The problem is that such issues, as a rule, do not reach the level of top management.

A worker who feels like a stakeholder in the process would tell the manager how to speed up production operations. And the time savings would be obvious.

How can the General Director interest staff?

Personnel will treat the improvement of production processes at their site as everyday and necessary work if you create an atmosphere in the team of constantly looking for ways to develop. How to do it? Try to convey the following thoughts to your subordinates:

• I am interested in the opinion of all employees of the company.
• Everyone is responsible for their own workflow and can suggest improvements. Everyone will be heard.
• The decision to change production processes will be discussed in working groups and made collectively.
• Initiative workers will be encouraged.

When employees see that you support the changes, that the entire enterprise management system is focused on them, they will actively look for ways to improve their own work. It is equally important that employees are confident in the future. It is impossible to be responsible for and improve the work process if the threat of dismissal is in the air. For example, in our company, I promised people that while I was in charge of production, none of them would be fired. We are talking about a team of like-minded people that I formed over several years. For a company participating in the alcohol market, where personnel rotation occurs frequently, such guarantees are very relevant.

Another incentive for development is the opportunity to gain professional skills at the plant. When production opened, there were few specialists. We hired university graduates as technologists and trained them from scratch. I spent up to 70–80% of my time in the shops, talking with managers and workers, advising on how to solve systemic problems. This is what we do to this day. In addition, we support employees in their pursuit of career growth. All this allows our people to believe that increasing production efficiency (improving quality, productivity, reducing time costs) depends on each of them.

How a working group reduced production defects

At the VSMPO-Avisma corporation, there were a lot of defects in one of the workshops. To cope with the problem, we created a working group.

1. What was done:

• collected and analyzed data on the causes of non-conforming products;
• the main “problem” products are highlighted (forged rods
• and rolling rings) and “problem” stages of production (forging and stripping of rods, making blanks for rings);
• a questionnaire survey of workers associated with the production of these products was conducted;
• an action plan has been created to reduce the number of defects;
• amendments were made to existing technological documents to clarify some important production points;
• recommendations have been written for loading furnaces, allowing for high-quality forging and obtaining quality products;
• the forging procedure on the press is detailed and described;
• “forging maps” have been created, which indicate the sequence of transitions and the time allotted for each transition;
• instructions have been written explaining how to improve the quality of metal forging by optimizing the stripping process;
• The motivation system for forging site workers has been changed: now defects are analyzed at team meetings, this information is taken into account when making decisions on bonuses;
• Operators, blacksmiths, craftsmen were trained to new work standards, and certification was organized;
• foremen were trained in the lean production system, which contributed to a change in views on production and a desire among employees to propose improvements.

2. Summary. During the year, the number of defective products decreased by 46%. We did not arrive at this result right away. At first, due to misunderstandings on the part of the workshop workers, difficulties arose with the implementation of the project. But then, in the process of teamwork and training, the need and possibility of change became obvious, and then the work proceeded quickly and amicably.

Based on materials provided by Antonina Sokolova, business coach at CentrOrgProm

Expert opinion

Michael Vader
President and Lead Trainer of Leadership Excellence International Inc, Colorado Springs, USA; certified expert in lean manufacturing implementation

People should not be afraid to suggest improvements; on the contrary, they should be reassured that their efforts will be rewarded. In order for employees to be interested in looking for optimization methods over a long period, it is necessary to gradually connect financial motivation. For example, pay bonuses at the end of the quarter (year) based on the results of savings due to transformations. It is important that all employees receive equal percentage bonuses and know about it. If a top manager receives, for example, an incentive bonus at the end of the year - 15% of the salary, then the worker should also receive at least 15%.

Leadership Excellence International was founded in 1995. Provides consulting services on optimization of production and business processes, elimination of hidden losses in production and service organizations. It has branches in India, Malaysia, Singapore, and is active in the Russian market.

How to implement lean manufacturing

The main task of the General Director is to be the initiator of the implementation of the lean production method and its active supporter. In practice, you can entrust implementation to the production director.

There are management tools that encourage staff to be interested in the work process, as well as to constantly improve their performance. All of them are aimed at introducing lean thinking into the enterprise. This means that each participant in the process should strive to do their work faster, better and with the least effort. We use five tools in our factory:

1. Creation of an autonomous working group to solve problems.

2. Visual management.

3. Rational use of the production site.

4. Change of types of personnel activities.

5. Maintenance of equipment (workplace).

1. Creation of an autonomous working group to solve problems

As a rule, information from a worker comes to the General Director through the following chain: worker - foreman - foreman - process engineer - department head - workshop manager - production director - General Director. As a result, information may be distorted or delayed.

To speed up the exchange of information, I created working groups at the enterprise. They consist of representatives of all production departments. Groups meet approximately once a week. Employees are given daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Each group solves the issue at its own level, regulates it and then comes to me with a solution. Let me give you an example. Preparing activated carbon before loading it into carbon columns was a labor-intensive and messy process. At the initiative of the employees, an installation was developed and constructed that allows this operation to be carried out with less labor costs and with better quality. Now coal preparation technology is the know-how of our company

What gives. As a result of this practice, in recent years, our losses of raw materials and auxiliary materials have decreased several times.

General Director speaks

Alexey Baranov


In one Russian car assembly company, work is structured as follows. At a weekly meeting, the assembly team reviews suggestions from operators to improve the process. A decision is then made to implement one or more proposals. What would happen next in most companies? Multi-week approval of improvement proposals, visas in many offices. What's going on here? The team's decision is binding on management. And the workshop manager is given one month to implement it. If you don't meet the deadline, you have yourself to blame. The team will meet again in a month and demand a report.

TsentrOrgProm LLC is a Russian provider of services for the development of Lean systems (lean manufacturing, kaizen, Toyota Production System). Clients: Rusal, KamAZ, VSMPO-Avisma, AvtoVAZ, Uralmashzavod, 1 May confectionery factory, Uralsvyazinform and other companies in Russia and neighboring countries.

2. Visual management

Visual management tools may vary depending on the specifics of production. Quality department employees are usually responsible for the development and application of visual management tools in production. At our factory, bar graphs hang in front of the workshops, and all employees can familiarize themselves with the operating status of the production line by shift. Indicators below the norm are marked in red. Next comes the downtime analysis, all performers identify its causes. They can be organizational, supply-related, functional, etc. Quality department employees document the work of the bottling line per shift, the operation of the machines, and analyze the reasons for stoppages. All this is noted on the primary accounting sheets, compiled and then analyzed at meetings with the workshop manager. Another useful tool visual management in production - the distinctive color of work clothes for quality control department employees. At our production, the specialists of this department are dressed in bright clothes, so that each employee can quickly seek advice if a problem or question arises.

What gives. Saving time and labor costs.

General Director speaks

Alexey Baranov

General Director of TsentrOrgProm LLC, Yekaterinburg

Along with histograms, you can use the andon board system - a device for visual monitoring of the production process. It can be a board that shows what is happening at the enterprise, or several light bulbs that light up, notifying about certain processes. For example, a red light indicates that for some reason the equipment has stopped; a light of a different color is lit if the equipment requires loading, that is, it has run out of materials or requires worker intervention.

3. Rational use of the production site

Rationally organized workplaces meet the following requirements: free space around the worker, absence of obstacles (nothing should interfere with his movements), passages between machines and workshops are designed so that workers do not have to spend a lot of time moving.

What gives. Increasing equipment utilization rate, saving time and labor costs, freeing up production space, reducing losses during transportation and movement.

The practitioner tells

Marina Antyufeeva
Director for Development, Production Optimization and Quality Management System of the Automotive Components Division of Avtokom OJSC, Kaluga

In 2005, at the Kaluga Automotive Electrical Equipment Plant (KZAE), I headed the production development center. We started introducing improvements from the assembly areas, since there was equipment that was easy to move and operations were short in duration. There is now a shortage of personnel at all factories in Russia; there was a shortage of balancers in the assembly areas of this enterprise. When observing the operator’s work, it turned out that the balancer receives paste at the workshop warehouse four to five times per shift (which is 1.66 seconds per part). If the balancing paste is delivered to the workplace, this will reduce periodic work by 35 hours.

Another example. Analyzing the work of the assembly section, it was revealed that the equipment was placed not according to the technological chain, but according to the principle “where there was free space.” We made a new layout, arranged the equipment sequentially - in accordance with the technological process. Now the part moved from machine to machine and was passed from hand to hand. There is no longer a need for large quantities containers and stock of parts, 90 sq. m of area, the total production cycle time decreased from 420.11 sec. up to 331.86 sec. This increased the site's throughput by 20%. And most importantly, the operators, mostly women, stopped carrying heavy loads from one workplace to another.

OJSC "Avtokom"- one of the suppliers of AvtoVAZ, manages the Kaluga Auto Electronics Plant, the Avtopribor plant (Kaluga), the Kozelsky Mechanical Plant ( Kaluga region), Lyskovsky Electrotechnical Plant ( Nizhny Novgorod Region), Serpukhov Automobile Plant, owns a 50 percent share of the Kinelagroplast plant ( Samara Region). The company was founded in 2000. Number of employees - 16.5 thousand. Annual turnover - 300 million US dollars.

4. Change of activities (rotation of personnel)

After you have explained to people that improvements can and should be proposed, it is necessary that this be done not from time to time, but systematically. It is important that employees understand what depends on the results of work on their production site, so that they become familiar with related processes. If a worker produces a low-quality product and it ends up in the next workshop, the workers of this workshop will have no time to think about whether to improve the process - they will have to eliminate the defects. You can solve this problem by rotating staff. Recommend that the production director move specialists from one workshop to another several times a year.

At our plant, specialists from one workshop periodically move to another and work there for some time. For example, technologists from the blending shop move to the bottling shop, where more issues are related to the organization of labor and assembly. For now, this practice is common only in production, but over time, I hope it will be applied throughout the company.

What gives. Employees become familiar with related processes, communicate, work together to solve cross-functional problems, and then standardize procedures to prevent the problems from recurring in the future. In addition, this approach disciplines the staff, makes it possible to understand what exactly is slowing down the work at the enterprise, which specialists duplicate or redo each other’s work.

5. Maintenance of equipment (workplace)

Working at an enterprise should be convenient. To do this, it is necessary that the condition of the equipment is impeccable, everything necessary (tools, workpieces) is at hand, and everything unnecessary is removed from the work table. Our company has an equipment care system that requires the participation of not only technical department employees, but also machine operators at their workplaces. It includes carrying out scheduled preventive maintenance and preventive inspections.

What gives. Changeover time is reduced, the risks of equipment emergency stops are reduced, and production safety is increased. The result of careful treatment of equipment in our company was that using domestic equipment we achieved the maximum utilization rate of bottling lines - 0.88–0.90 (while normally it is 0.80–0.85). Some companies cannot achieve this with advanced German and Italian equipment.

Boeing Visual Guidance System

The visual production management system at the Boeing Moscow Design Center is structured as follows. The designers are in big hall, everyone has their own workplace, which is separated from the rest by small partitions. Each person works at his own computer and is not distracted by anything, but if he gets up, he can see the whole hall. Workplace the leader is on some elevation, and he sees the entire hall. The center has adopted the following visual system: if the designer has completed the task, he raises a green flag. The manager sees that the employee is free and can perform the next task. If the performer has problems that do not require immediate intervention, then he raises a yellow flag. And the manager knows that when he has free time, he must approach this person. If the problem is serious (the designer cannot complete even half of his task), the employee raises a red flag - this is already a signal not only for the manager, but also for the entire team of employees appointed in advance. Team members see a red flag and immediately go to the colleague in need of help, figure out what happened, and work together to fix the problem.

Based on materials provided by TsentrOrgProm LLC

General Director speaks

Alexey Baranov
General Director of TsentrOrgProm LLC, Yekaterinburg

At one of the light industry enterprises located on the Volga, a team of mechanics had the following situation: each mechanic on duty had his own box, which contained all the tools, fixtures, and components, including absolutely unnecessary ones. It took quite a lot of time to find the tool needed for the job - more than five minutes. When the company began to organize workplaces, the working group, together with the adjusters, analyzed the contents of their drawers. We removed everything rarely used and unnecessary and came to the conclusion that instead of boxes for each adjuster, we could have one for the whole team. So instead of twelve tool boxes there were only four. Since the number of tools and devices has been reduced, so has the time spent searching. the necessary tool Now it takes less - literally a few seconds.

How to implement kaizen in five days

Michael Vader
President and Lead Trainer of Leadership Excellence International Inc, Colorado Springs, USA; certified expert in lean manufacturing implementation.

You can start implementing kaizen in an enterprise with a five-day breakthrough assault. The General Director can participate in the process personally, entrust control over the process to the production director (if we are talking about manufacturing plant) or engage an external consultant.

1st day. The CEO should set a specific goal for employees to achieve after the five-day period (eliminate waste by so many percent, increase productivity by so many percent, reduce cycle time, etc.). It is especially important to show that you will listen to the opinion of not only the top manager, but also the worker.

The next stage is the creation of a working group. It should include no more than six to eight people. Each group member has one vote, everyone has the right to express own opinion. Approximate group composition:

• two operators (performing mechanical work);
• engineer or supervisor (manager responsible for a specific area where improvements are required);
• quality service manager (if we are talking about processes on which quality depends) or repairman (if these are production processes);
• two people from other departments (accounting, purchasing or shipping department, representative of the supplier or customer); these people, not privy to the process, will ask questions that may be stupid from the point of view of specialists, but necessary for the emergence of new, breakthrough ideas.

The team goes to the shop floor and collects data on the performance of current operations as of one day (production volume, defect rate, quality issues, hidden losses due to movement around the warehouse, machine downtime, etc.). Then the problems that arise in the process of achieving the goal set by the General Director are described. The task of the first day of the group is to understand the goal and collect data about the process.

2nd day. The person in charge (CEO, production director, external consultant) should lead the team in examining the list of problems that need to be solved on the way to the goal. All participants are involved in the discussion. Combine similar ideas and try to focus on two or three possible solutions. Proposed improvements must be measurable.

3rd day. The working group is discussing the possibility of implementing ideas. Let the team agree that small trial improvements will be implemented in which all employees can participate. Someone on the team should start documenting the new procedures. It should be taken into account that the group submits a report on the transformations to the General Director no later than the fifth day.

4th day. The group continues to implement changes and begins work on measuring the effectiveness of the new process. To tell management how much improvement the team has made, they will need to compare performance before and after the change.

5th day. The group completes documentation of new operating procedures and reports to the General Director (if he was not involved in brainstorming), what kind of improvements were made.

The organization of production has a significant impact on labor productivity. Often, even small improvements in the organization of production can significantly increase its efficiency, so this issue should be given great attention.

The organization of production is primarily influenced by the number of products to be manufactured per unit of time. Hence, the criterion for choosing the form of organization of the production process is the number of products to be manufactured, their nomenclature and labor intensity.

In mechanical engineering practice, there are two types of production processes: flow and non-flow. The in-line type is more efficient due to high labor productivity, short production cycle, simplification of planning, accounting and production management. In single, small-scale and medium-scale production, as a rule, a non-flow type of production process and organizational forms are used in the form of a site with a group arrangement of equipment, a technologically closed area and a subject-closed area.

The organization of production sites with a group arrangement of equipment is effective for the production of parts of a wide range, manufactured in units or in small quantities. In this case, the equipment is divided into groups based on the same purpose; blanks are processed in batches.

For example, there is a section of milling machines and there is a section of lathes, etc.; These areas are led by a master. This arrangement allows for more complete loading, but the disadvantage is the numerous movements of the product around the workshop from section to section until complete production. After processing, products are stored near machines or in specially equipped areas. After each operation, small-sized products are delivered to a central or intermediate warehouse for accounting and storage. The product that has passed the last operation and control is delivered to the warehouse finished products. This form of organization is characterized by low technical and economic indicators, complexity of planning, and significant movements of products.

Under these conditions, a contradiction arises between the desire to load the machines more fully and the order in which finished parts are received in time for assembly in accordance with the requirements of technological processes for assembling products and scheduling. Very often, the underutilization of a machine is explained not so much by the technical difficulties of loading it, but by the limitations imposed by assembly requirements. If these requirements are neglected and the machines are fully loaded, then there will be a need to increase storage space where finished parts will lie waiting to be called for assembly. With such an organization of production, the possibility of using a flow form is excluded.

With an increase in the number of parts to be manufactured per unit of time, they move to a more advanced organizational form - technologically closed sections.

The organization of technologically closed areas involves the grouping of products according to the homogeneity of their service purpose, constructive shapes and sizes. For each group of such products, a site is organized containing all types of equipment necessary for the complete production of each product in this group. An example of this form of organization would be areas for the production of spindles, fasteners, gears, etc.

The equipment is installed, if possible, in a sequence corresponding to the flow of technological processes of most parts of the group; This is ensured by the fact that standard technology can be used for similar parts.

Thus, organizational form closed areas theoretically creates the prerequisites for the implementation of continuous production processes, which allows: to improve the organization of planning and accounting; parts travel a shorter distance, the time for reconfiguring equipment when moving from processing one part to another is reduced, since their technological processes are similar; the production cycle becomes shorter; It’s easier to organize quality control.

Technological equipment in technologically closed areas can communicate vehicles, various types of lifting and transport devices. All this ultimately makes it possible to achieve higher technical and economic indicators.

With a further increase in the output of products of the same range, subject-closed areas are organized. They are used to completely manufacture assembly units, for example, an engine, a gearbox, a gearbox, etc.

With a further increase in the number of parts produced per unit of time, it is advisable to organize the production process in a continuous form in the form of a production line.

A continuous production process means the continuity of movement of manufactured products and their uniform output per unit of time.

In such perfect performance The continuous production process can be found in industries with a continuous production cycle (for example, in the production of petroleum products in oil refining, where production is “batchless”).

The continuous production process is characterized by:

1) direct flow, when the object of labor moves forward from one piece of equipment to another without return movement;

2) the continuity of movement of the object of labor in the process of its manufacture;

3) rhythmicity, when the product at the end of the production process comes off at regular intervals.

The highest level of flow in the production process will be if all three of these properties are present.

In mechanical engineering production, which is usually discrete, it is difficult to find such a process. The processes that come closest to the ideal flow form are those implemented using rotary lines.

Varieties of flow organization of production are variable-flow and continuous-flow forms. Moreover, in Lately The variable-flow form begins to dominate, characterized by the periodic launch of several types of parts on the same equipment.

In production lines, equipment is placed along the process operations, which makes it possible to widely use multi-machine maintenance and the best way use the production area. All pieces of equipment are connected by vehicles to transfer the workpiece; the duration of each operation is equal to or a multiple of the release stroke. With flow-based production, there is no need for warehouses, with the exception of small intermediate reserves to compensate for changes in time spent on operations.

Since the flow form of organizing the production process is the most effective, it is natural to strive to use the flow method in single and small-scale production, which was the reason for the emergence of group technology.

On the other hand, serious changes have also emerged in mass production, which have given rise to a tendency to produce the same product in mass production alternately in batches of its different modifications. These changes are driven by the need to satisfy the rapidly changing needs of consumers. However, in this case, a contradiction arises between the desire, on the one hand, to satisfy the needs of the consumer as quickly as possible by producing different products, and on the other, to avoid interruptions in the production process by producing products in large quantities. Thus, in mass production, the problem of using the flow method arises.

Indeed, the tendency observed in mechanical engineering to accelerate the change of manufactured products changes the content of mass production, expanding the range of manufactured products and thereby bringing it closer to mass production in terms of nomenclature, and to mass production in terms of the number of parts produced per unit of time) These contradictory conditions cause difficulties in carrying out production in a continuous form.

In this regard, it is necessary to find ways to widely use the flow form not only in mass production, but also in serial and even individual production.

The trend observed in mechanical engineering to accelerate the change of manufactured products has led to the fact that multi-item, multi-batch production is beginning to dominate.

The degree of breadth of product range and batch size at different enterprises can vary significantly. For example, mass production enterprises maintain large volumes of production of products of several types, but with a large number of modifications; at other enterprises the range of products has sharply increased with small production volumes. Thus, among modern enterprises it is difficult to find an enterprise with a constant type of production (single, serial, mass).

In order for an enterprise to be competitive in the new conditions, its production must be characterized by high productivity, flexibility, mobility, i.e., be able to quickly and at minimal cost switch to the production of new products. At the same time, traditional organizational forms of the production process are focused on the corresponding types of production and therefore can no longer ensure high production efficiency in the new conditions.

Indeed, if, for example, in the first quarter it is required to produce a wide range of products in small batches, and in the second quarter - a smaller range of products in medium batches, then the organizational form of the production process, effective in the first quarter, will not be effective in the second quarter.

Thus, a search for new organizational forms of the production process is required, and for this it is necessary to understand the advantages and disadvantages of traditional organizational forms.

Traditional organizational forms in unit production provide high flexibility, but with low productivity, and in mass production - high productivity but lack of flexibility. The new organizational form must simultaneously provide both high productivity and flexibility in the production process)