Initial State:

• Multiple production sites and outsourced powder coating created severe tracking challenges:

• 1. Lost parts, urgent emergency work orders, and overproduction

• 2. Extensive search times (up to 60-90 minutes per component)

• 3. Employee turnover exceeded 250% annually

• 4. Orders already 4-8 months behind schedule, 

• 5. Negative (-6%) Earnings Before Tax

Key Challenges:

• No system for identifying powder-coated parts

• Part numbers were not in use for assembly operations of any painted parts

  • Instead, tape measures were the number one hand tool 

  • Forget mass production, this was mass obstruction 

  • Relying on tribal knowledge and 100% engineer intervention to locate and identify components

  • Zero visibility of parts in process

  • Line Clearance nonexistent

• Inefficient storage and retrieval methods

• • Multiple handling points, including outsourced powder coat, without tracking

• • Impossible to know if a necessary component was present or missing until entire building was searched

Plant Manager's 90 minute mandate:

• • Part retrieval method: 

    1. Assembly associate must search solo for 30 minutes, 

    2. Fetch engineer to help search for next 30 minutes, 

    3. Then interrupt assembly lead to join the search for the following 30 additional minutes.

    4. After 90 minutes the search was called off and an emergency work order was expedited. 

       • It was Alarming how necessary this was. 

       • Imagine my blood pressure after going through this hopeless process and actually finding the needed parts after 76 minutes of searching(!) 

       • Some parts were found within the first 30 minutes. 

But other times, the parts were never found. 90 minutes were commonly wasted, with increasing "search party" size.

• Thousands of painted rectangles all looked the same

• Seas of pallets with no room to walk between

Slips, trips, and falls

• 100% Unit Test Failure Rate (wiring defects)

• 100% Quality Inspection Failure Rate (assembly defects)

• Reliance on scarce tribal knowledge for assembly
  
  

  • Just one employee had the experience with all product lines to understand models, nuances, trim and functional differences, assembly process, and component function & placement.