Contact: Phyllis Levine at 845.896.6934 X3001 or by Email
HVTDC's 5S Program Helps Atlantic Detroit Diesel Improve Efficiency
HVTDC is pleased to announce the successful completion of a 5S Training Program for the staff of the Rebuilding Center of the Atlantic Detroit Diesel-Allison, LLC (Atlantic DDA) in Saugerties, New York. Bob Earle, Branch Manager of the Rebuilding Center, stated that the program has succeeded to date because, “our staff has cleaned out enough from the shop area to garner $2,000 in scrap metal recycling alone. The area has been cleaned up so much that it now accommodates more transmissions, and the company can now bring in more work.”
With their shop area “splitting at the seams with so much stuff”, Earle contacted HVTDC to provide 5S Program training to the staff at the Saugerties facility. “We could barely move around the shop floor, much less find anything.” Earle had heard of the 5S Program from some of Atlantic DDA’s branches and subsidiaries that had been selected by the company’s management to receive the training. Since the program was not available from the company’s headquarters in Detroit, Earle contacted HVTDC (www.hvtdc.org) which is one of ten regional technology development centers funded cooperatively through the NYS Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR) and the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST). HVTDC works directly with small and mid-sized companies in the Hudson Valley region to help them adopt new technologies and business practices that will grow their business to be competitive.
HVTDC Lead Engineer, Arnold Most, summarizes the 5S Program as: Sort – Go through a plant, determine what needs to be thrown out; moved to another area; or remain where it is. “The Atlantic staff loaded up dumpster after dumpster. I’ve rarely seen such a thorough cleaning out. It doesn’t look like the same company.” Set it all in order for the most efficient operational flow. Shine – Get out the mop, the cleaning products, etc. “Atlantic is a transmission plant,” states Most, “so there’s a lot of grease and oil and some areas had gotten pretty messy. They cleaned it all up.” Standardize – Examine what areas of the plant should be used for specific purposes and document this. Sustain – Establish what needs to take place on a weekly or monthly basis to sustain what has been achieved. Create checklists to sustain an area that has been sorted, set in order, cleaned up and designated for specific tasks.
Atlantic DDA’s Earle reported that, “Our staff really latched on to the 5S concept. Through the past several years, our 18,000 feet of shop space became the dumping ground for a lot of stuff, and we were getting overwhelmed.” The company’s Saugerties branch opened in 1999, and since that time has been serving the needs of other branches. Headquartered in Lodi, New Jersey, Atlantic DDA sells and services diesel and alternative fuel engines, transmissions and related components, parts and accessories for equipment servicing various on- and off-highway markets. These markets include medium and heavy-duty trucks, buses, fire and emergency vehicles, power generation systems, commercial and pleasure marine equipment, construction and industrial equipment in the five boroughs of New York, Long Island, eastern New York state, northern New Jersey, western Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont.
“Having completed HVTDC’s training, and cleaned up the shop,” stated Earle, “our staff now wants to sustain all that we have accomplished to date. They want to put everything in a place that makes productivity work better. The areas they recognize they need to continually address are the shine and sustain steps. To help them sustain the clean, productive workspace they desire, they took before and after photos to remind them of what shouldn’t happen in the future.”