Every day at Windsor is an ongoing effort to improve products, services and processes to stay in front of the competition. Often times these are small, incremental improvements and once in awhile we have that truly breakthrough improvement.
We are always evaluating our processes to be sure we are effective, efficient and reliable to the customer. This is a very common-sense approach that does not require a lot of training. Once you have been introduced to some of the easy-to-use improvement tools, it is amazing to see the progress you can make with just a little practice.
One of the tools that we use to review our level of improvement includes the 7 Wastes of Production. This tool can be used with any process to eliminate waste and non-value-added time. If there is a step in the process that does not change the form, fit or function, it must either be reduced or eliminated.
Some of the wastes we review are:
Over Production
- Too many peaks and valleys in production creating bottlenecks
- Producing before it is required
Waiting
- Idle time with either a person or machine
- People looking for tools/parts
- Waiting on material
Transportation
- Large gaps between work stations
Processing
- Too much time spent looking for material
- Double handling of parts/product
Inventory
- Excess stock that doesn't move
- Too much material in work area taking up valuable floor space
Motion
- Inefficient movement
- Inconsistent methods
- No SOP's
Defects
- Poor quality
- Rework/repair
- No source inspection