Foxboro成功采用精益生产方式生产压力变送器

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Foxboro成功采用精益生产方式生产压力变送器

By Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group

Massachusetts is no longer known for its manufacturing prowess, but a visit to the Foxboro M&I (a division of Invensys Process Systems) manufacturing facility found a bright spot. Their Lean Manufacturing program was first introduced in 1998 and significant progress has been made - with numbers to back this statement up. For the manufacturing of Foxboro pressure transmitters, here are the results from 1999 to today:
Unit shipments have doubled.
Inventory turns have gone from about 4 to 24.
Defects per Million (DPM) have gone from 3 Sigma to near 5 Sigma.
Inventory for WIP and finished goods has gone down from $4 million to $1.3 million.
Lead-time from order to ship has gone from 7 days to 1 day for 80 percent of the product line.

The Foxboro pressure transmitter product line has thousands of possible configurations. On any given day, only a few shipments duplicate the same configuration. The style of manufacturing is assemble-to-customer order with medium volume and very high mix not normally thought to be amenable to Lean Manufacturing.

How did they do it? The Lean Manufacturing program has strong senior management support with deep involvement by the manufacturing folks who actually do the work. First, lean manufacturing concepts were assimilated with hands-on training. Then, teams conducted Value Stream Mapping which highlighted areas for improvement. This drove other lean techniques and tools like 5S, set-up reduction, takt time, heijunka, kanban, Six Sigma and more. Results like the ones listed above have a noticeably positive impact on the balance sheet and P&L statement, further cementing the senior executive support.

The lean manufacturing program extends from order entry to shipment. A custom serialized tracking application provides traceability and genealogy which is used to identifying the route cause of defects. Also, a "Rocket" application allows orders that are entered by a customer via a web browser to go directly to the plant floor where the assembly begins.

At Foxboro, lean manufacturing is the program and six sigma is positioned as a tool within that program. In lean, there are "7 ways of waste." Six Sigma is a tool to attack the waste of "Correction" from rework or scrap caused by defects. ARC supports this approach for discrete and hybrid manufacturers. Lean's "elimination of waste" has broad implications. Six Sigma is more narrowly focused on the reduction of variation and defects.

Currently, a manual printed tag is used for the Kanban signal. This has some of the typical problems with Kanban based on hardcopy forms. Lost hardcopy tags and the lack of visibility into status are concerns. They are considering moving to an electronic Kanban system which is a change that ARC would recommend.

Lean manufacturing has allowed the Foxboro M&I manufacturing facility to be very competitive. It is able to stay in an area with some high costs of doing business as compared to other regions of the world.