Thursday, September 04, 2008

How Many Kaizen Team Members does it take to Change a Conveyor?


At one of Batesville Casket’s kaizen events last week, we found out the answer to this question. It took the whole team of eleven members in pit crew style just under 29 minutes to change a conveyor track. Our event was focused on adding different casket models on to our main assembly line and attempted to make the changes without a disruption to production, hence the 29 minute goal which was completed during the assembly department 30 minute lunch period.

With the planning and precision of a professional pit crew team, our kaizen team planned out all the elements of the change and staged all the material along with tools using basic SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) principles. Once the buzzer blared signaling the start of the lunch break, the kaizen team jumped into action. Despite the close quarters and a couple of uncooperative fasteners, the kaizen team successfully completed the conveyor change as the line associates returned from lunch to start the line back up.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow that's how many people you need to change a conveyor track? 11 people in 29 minutes... If I may use man hours in countin, that would translate to 2 minutes and 63 seconds per person to do his job. Not bad, I think. :)