Saturday, August 16, 2008

Point Lesson Results

From my last post on the power of point lessons, the results from our spaghetti diagram training are in. After a short 15 minute lesson followed by an opportunity to learn by doing, we were able to identify and shorten distances traveled within our operations. The total daily distances before kaizen was 23,122 feet and after kaizen the new distance traveled was only 3,299 feet. Fantastic! In just one day, we eliminated 19,823 feet of daily distance traveled for an 86% improvement. That is elimination of over 3.75 miles of walking a day within our plant. Point lessons can be a powerful, simple tool.

1 comment:

Mike T. said...

Hi Mike,

I 'attempt' to have each group perform before and after kaizen spaghetti maps every time (a few times we haven't captured them). It is always an amazing thing to see the amount of travel that one does daily without thought.

In one recent event, the focus was on a cell that had been working on Lean techniques for over 6 months. They felt things were pretty good. In the end, we reduced travel significantly (shown in a map, not by calculated feet, so I can't claim the exact footage - but easily 50% travel reduction) AND reduced setup time by 55% - from an area already leading Lean in the plant.

The greatest result was seeing the light of understanding in people's eyes that there is ALWAYS room for improvement, that's why we call it continuous!

As a footnote, the other area (we had two teams) focused in a new area and achieved 75% setup reduction and over 85% reduction in travel.

Mapping and "go see". I don't know if there are better tools :)