Production Transformation

Making Connections

Transforming Production through One-Piece Flow

Traditional production line manufacturing brings a number of challenges: poor quality control, long manufacturing lead times and no flexibility.

But change the single production line into multiple U-shaped cells, and something amazing occurs. Workers are collected on the inside of the cell, facilitating communication and observation of each process – in turn leading to cross-training, just-in-time materials movement and improved quality. Plus, unlike the traditional line set up, these multiple cells can more easily produce multiple product types simultaneously. How could your business be transformed if you could produce items customized to the customer’s need in mere days while your competitor’s time frame was a week or more?

In one Mexico-based manufacturing plant, total productivity increased by 70% after the transition from assembly line to a production cell arrangement. The factory now produces 100% more product than it did seven years ago. Quality, measured in defects per million opportunities or ppm, was above 20,000 pre-change and is now less than 100 ppm. Likewise, the scrap rate has changed from 4% to 0.4%.

And, when the parent company closed two other plants and transferred inventory, equipment and new product expectations to manufacturing space, workers were ready. Within months they completely integrated the new operations without negative impact to their existing production.