Value Stream Mapping Review Leads Lamothermic Casting Corp.
to Less Breakage
“The most dramatic change is that we involved everyone in the company in evaluating how we produce our products, and almost everyone had ideas that were listened to.”
Michael Steele
General Manager
Lamothermic Precision Investment Casting Corp., a state-of-the-art casting foundry in Brewster, NY, has reaped numerous rewards from bringing the many services of the Hudson Valley Technology Development Center (HVTDC) into their business operations. The rewards began when HVTDC’s Director of Sales, Ralph Brown, “came in to evaluate how we approached sales,” states Michael Steele, Lamothermic’s General Manager. Through a series of workshops, Brown showed the staff how to measure sales and evaluate successes. “He started by teaching us to look at our company’s structure and how to look at our success; evaluate why we lost quotes and bids; and where we are getting the most return on our investments from advertising and marketing.”
Following the sales series, the next step was to prevent the consistent, daily breakage of the ceramic molds they produce. Steele states, “We needed help to determine where the breakage was happening and how we could prevent this ongoing problem.” A specific area of the plant was selected where there has been a lot of breakage. Arnold Most, HVTDC’s Lead Engineer, states, “Our task was to help the staff look at the entire production process, think about each step and ask questions such as how to fix the problem. Through Value Stream Mapping, their job was to examine how their products flow from one production step to another and where they experienced the biggest problems. The question of how they could eliminate those problems followed. The team looked at the middle of the process where the fragile mold is created and a lot of breakage and defects take place while the mold is being produced.”
To initiate the Value Stream Mapping process, HVTDC helped the staff form a team to focus on the Lost Wax Process. The steps of this process include: 1) make wax patterns; 2) patterns are assembled and coated with ceramic; 3) the wax is melted out of the ceramic shells; 4) the shells are then heated and molten metal is poured into them to create metal parts. “By looking at each step,” explains Most, “the team saw that the molds were loaded onto a cart to be sent to melt out the wax. They realized that the factory floor was very rough and the molds were breaking while being transported. The inexpensive and simple solution was to put down steel plates to smooth out the floor. The success was seen in improvements to that process that were not very expensive, simple, and reduced the number of defects in the ceramic molds.”
Steele comments that, “By instituting the Value Stream Mapping, we’ve seen very good success with our employees making changes to prevent the breakage without a lot of expenditure. It made a big difference in that it reduced the time we were spending moving molds from different points of production. The biggest factor has been that Value Stream Mapping opened up people’s minds as to how to make successful changes in how we are operating.” The company also brought in employees who are not stationed in the specific area of the plant where the Value Stream Mapping was conducted. When they returned to their areas of the plant, they shared what they had learned with staff members in those areas. “Our staff has brought the concept to other areas of the plant.”
As far as sales growth, Steele cited that the company has identified and eliminated about 5-10% of the revenue that provided little or no profit, perhaps even generated a loss. “We have increased our revenue through more diligent representative monitoring and visiting our key accounts accompanied by our reps, which we believe accounts for approximately a 10-15% revenue increase.” In addition to those figures, Steele comments that the “Lean techniques, and the rework/scrap reduction efforts have reduced the previous scrap rate by 20-25%, which has reduced labor/overtime by 15%, and material usage by 10%.”
Lean Manufacturing:
HVTDC then conducted four “Lean 101” seminars led by Project Engineers Phil Van Oss and Arnold Most. “Our objective was to instill a sense of working lean and eliminating waste.” Michael Steele states that in 2006, ”we will follow up the seminars with more team projects and will continue to utilize the lean methods across the entire plant. Our staff is utilizing the lean concepts without being coached.”
After the seminar series, the staff moved quickly to determine what they could do to change the positioning of the tables and they evaluated the amount of steps being taken between different operations. “By repositioning tables and cleaning up the area,” explains Steele, “we were better able to evaluate the process. It reduced a lot of unnecessary movement and the number of steps involved in the process. It also made the work that was going on in that area much more visible. We can now see what is going on in that area of the plant.”
“The most dramatic change”, states Steele, ”is that we involved everyone in the company in evaluating how we produce our products and almost everyone had ideas that were listened to. They felt more comfortable coming up with ideas for making the production process better. Some of them had those ideas for a long time and now they felt comfortable enough to bring them forward.”
For additional information, call 845-896-6934.