Client: Marley Plumbing & Drainage

Sector: Process Industries - Manufacturing & Packaging

Key tools or services

Lean Thinking, Value Stream Mapping, Implementation - Lean Factory, Stock Reduction, Warehouse & Distribution, Productivity Improvement.

Requirement

The first stage of the Marley Plumbing and Drainage lean implementation programme was to identify where waste could be removed from the overall production system and then to develop an ongoing lean implementation plan for improvement.

Utilising our unique hands on approach to knowledge transfer, the lean implementation team at Lenham undertook a Value Stream Mapping activity for a number of specific value streams.

The key findings of the VSM activity were the plant operated with:

• High levels of finished goods stock and work in progress
• Excessive product lead times
• Large production batch quantities
• Unpredictable planning process
• Opportunity to improve OTIF performance

Response

In order to address these key issues the team, led throughout by the picme team, developed the following lean implementation plan covering the following themes;

• Reduce Changeover time to allow for small batch manufacture
• To develop and implement a pull based production system which would enable a reduction in working capital
• Roll out the approach to other key value stream across the business

The site lean implementation team were then tasked with developing a production system which would enable a significant reduction in working capital.

The first stage of this process was to simplify the warehousing and dispatch activity used to service both retail and trade based customers. Using our lean expertise, the team then developed a production system that scheduled production based on products dispatched from this central warehouse.

In order to minimise downtime an optimum production campaign was developed which eventually gave the facility a standard production plan. This plan enabled volume products to be made weekly and products with limited customer requirements to be made fortnightly or monthly as demanded. The plan also enabled time to be set aside for maintenance and operational improvements to be made on equipment which was traditionally highly utilised.

Initially the production system was set up using a traditional T-Card based system to visually display production loading. This has since been superseded by a visual computer system which displays production requirements at point of manufacture.

Result

Since implementation of the pull system the company have:

• Reduced inventory by 80%
• Increased stock turns from 4 to 21
• Increased productivity by 22%
• Reduced distance travelled by 40%

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