Packaging Automation Limited
Following intervention from the Manufacturing Advisory Service in the North West, the UK’s leading manufacturer of heat sealing equipment - Packaging Automation, achieves cost savings of £100,000.
Heat sealing equipment
Cheshire – 100 Employees
Activities undertaken
5S
Visual management boards
Maintenance tagging system
Process activity mapping
Key Achievements
£100,000 reduction in inventory
40% productivity improvement
Cost to Business
£3000
Activities Undertaken
Packaging Automation is the UK’s leading manufacturer of heat sealing equipment. The company designs, builds and supplies equipment to the food, medical and household goods industries and employs 100 people at their site in Knutsford.
The company first worked with MAS in 2006 to improve productivity and introduce 5S into the tooling area. Although the initial work was very encouraging and great progress was made, the discipline began to slip and progress stalled.
Following a second visit by MAS in 2008, two main objectives were highlighted:
Re-establish 5S not just in the tooling area but right across the plant.
Create a more efficient approach towards production.
The factory was divided into discrete zones with champions selected to become the drivers of improvements within each zone. Visual management boards were also implemented.
A T-card audit system was introduced to track the progress of daily tasks along with the use of a tagging system used to identify problems in equipment.
The T-card audit system allows champions and managers to visually see whether basic tasks have been completed or not. On task completion, the cards are turned from red side (not done) to green (task complete) and allow for intervention if required.
One of the major projects jointly tackled with MAS was speeding up manufacture of Packaging Automation’s new generation Vision 400 machine. This began with a major rethink of how the whole sourcing and build process was managed – identifying that by breaking down the build into discrete sub assemblies they could plan component manufacture, labour requirements and bought out parts deliveries just in time to support a smoothly sequenced modular build.
As well as speeding up manufacture from 9 weeks to just 13 days and gaining four days additional capacity in the machine shop, this approach also relieved cash flow as the company ordered components and materials on a just in time basis, rather than holding them as £100,000 worth of stock.
MAS next worked with team to introduce the Andon system to identify the root causes of production problems. The Andon system, which is used in the automotive industry, shows a green beacon light when production is running perfectly. This is switched to red if the assembly team encounters a problem signaling an immediate request for help from the team leader to address the issue and agree a course of action, then turning the signal to orange to indicate action underway. Once the problem is fully resolved the light is switched back to green. Downtime is automatically recorded and the issues can then be analysed and countermeasures discussed and applied.
An added bonus for Packaging Automation is that the company designed and built its own Andon System which it plans to take to manufacture on a commercial basis.
