According to NORDAM Black Belt John Younger, the company had tried Lean years before. However, when the entire airline industry slowed operation and production after 9/11, NORDAM, like many companies, decided to cut programs such as Lean in an effort to reduce layoffs. Recently though, NORDAM began reimplementing both Six Sigma and Lean initiatives across the organization.

Younger selected a team that included both process experts and management. They took advantage of SCORE, BMG’s methodology for applying and tracking Kaizen events, for its ability to quickly reduce waste and help organizations get fast results from improvement efforts.

Planning and Preparation: The Select, Clarify and Organize Phases

The first order of business was to Select the exact process steps for improvement. After a review of the full Cessna manufacturing process, the team chose the metal bond assembly sub-process because a variety of key components are built here, including fuel tank skins, baggage doors and leading edges. Although it represented only a fraction of the overall process time, the SCORE team found that up to two days worth of parts could be backlogged at this point, waiting for the busy assembly teams to catch up.

After Selecting the process area to focus on, the SCORE team Clarified its objectives and Organized for a four day Run week -- the main Kaizen event.

Running the Kaizen Event

On the first day of the Run week, the SCORE team reviewed the existing assembly process by videotaping operators at work. Younger says this was a “great eye-opener” because the operators actually witnessed wasted motion (walking to different work areas, looking for tools, etc.). The team also spent time sorting, straightening and correcting safety issues in their work areas (adding an additional S, for safety, to the traditional 5S technique for reducing clutter).

On the second day of Run, the team discussed what they wanted the assembly process to look like (the “future state process”). The TAKT time goal, based on customer demand, was 50 parts per day at 10.5 minutes per part. The assembly process cycle time would have to be greatly reduced to meet this goal.

Over the rest of the Run week, Younger and his team investigated the assembly process in detail, leading to a host of improvements:

• Eliminating wasted motion: The SCORE team found that the door assembly workers spent too much time walking to and from a cure oven housed in a different room. The team identified an oven in a closer room that could be used to cure doors, and would reduce walking time. In addition, the employees were given handheld barcode scanners to track work orders, eliminating walking time to a centralized time clock. Younger estimates that these two changes alone saved two miles of walking each day, or 416 miles of walking per year!

• Eliminating wasted time and intellect: The SCORE team’s video analysis showed that tank skin builders on the day shift spent the first 40 minutes unloading parts from the oven to complete the previous night’s work. Younger and his team labeled this activity non-value added as it was a waste of intellect for these skilled workers. “The value for them is to build parts,” he explains. “That’s what they do best, not unload and load parts.” Further analysis showed that the night shift operators had ample time to unload the parts from the ovens, so the SCORE team load-balanced the process by shifting the unloading task to the night team.

• Improving safety: The SCORE team noted that the tank skin production process involved securing the tank skins on a 12’x 5’ table weighing 130 pounds. The loaded tables were then lifted by employees onto a “baker’s rack” to be wheeled into the curing oven at the end of the day. However, a loaded table took four people to lift, leaving the possibility for injury high. In addition to the safety question, the operators sometimes had to pull other employees away from their work to help load the tables. Younger suggested resizing the tables to better fit the tank skins. Using scrap materials on hand, the team built a smaller prototype table that worked perfectly. The new table was almost half the size, and weighed only 29 pounds, making it safe for two people to lift. “That was one of the simplest changes we made that, in my opinion, made one of the biggest impacts,” says Younger.
  

The Evaluate Phase

Since the Lean improvements were implemented, the metal bond assembly process has consistently exhibited lower cycle times. The TAKT time goal of 10.5 minutes per part has been met for leading edges and tank skins, with doors showing steady progress in the right direction.

Even though some of the employees Younger worked with were initially skeptical of the Lean initiative, many of them have come around. Younger stresses that involving process owners on the event team is essential to any Lean project’s success. “You can’t just say, ‘this is the way you’re going to do it.’ They need to be a part of it, and that’s what we did from day one.”

Based on the success of this project, other SCORE events have since taken place in NORDAM’s manufacturing division. “We were pleased with the response,” Younger says. “I think people really believe that this has made a difference.”