In 2021, Cappers has implemented major changes in its manufacturing organization, the most important has been the introduction of Lean Manufacturing. Mujdat TOPAC, our Production Manager tells us more about it:
Mujdat, what is LEAN Manufacturing?
“Lean manufacturing focuses on eliminating waste in manufacturing processes to produce the quantity required by the customer, at the right time, while ensuring the quality of the finished product.
“Lean” means “fat free”. Lean Manufacturing can therefore mean “without unnecessary steps”. It is a set of principles, techniques and tools designed to manage a production or service, while eliminating waste, i.e. non-value added activities.
What has this done for Cappers?
If we compare with our operation before this project, we have made very big changes to the general layout of the workshop, the work stations and physical flows, but also to the organization with new planning and management methods.
This new strategy has allowed us to have more visibility in our planning and to smooth out our loads more easily.This gives us better reactivity for urgent customer requests and a better vision with more precision on our planning.
The benefits for the production workshop are also numerous, with a reduction in work-in-progress, fewer breaks in the internal supply chain, fewer flows and moves between stations or material stocks and, of course, fewer overloads with anticipated control of our load/capacity.
How did you implement it?
Our management gave us all the means to make this project a success, but our greatest strength was the involvement of the Cappers team: and moving and reorganizing an entire workshop in 3 days, without stopping production, mid-June, was very sporting!
We called on an industrial engineering trainee, Abdoul Kadry OUATTARA, for the whole analysis of the existing situation and determination of the critical points to be improved, which consisted of long and tedious work in the field, without which we would not have been able to obtain such good results.
We were also monitored and advised by Serge VIGLIANO, a Lean Manufacturing consultant from SELFFLUX, throughout the project. His external point of view, and his awareness of continuous improvement, were very relevant and enabled us to keep a steady pace to move forward.
What happens now?
Lean being a continuous improvement approach, we are moving forward with our Lean Team and now have the support of Nick GOVAERT from our sister company Delta.
We also want to replicate this work for our industrial valve workshop which is our next goal to achieve.