I have written about machines, automation and state-of-the-art technology, but today let us have a look at an area where many companies employ most of their manual labour – the assembly process. Most cabinet companies ship their products assembled to minimize on-site installation time or because their customers mandate
We toured a company in Switzerland that automated the assembly process to an astonishing degree. The assembly area of this batch size one office furniture manufacturer was literally deserted. The only operator I spotted, apart from our guide, was the quality control person at the end of line. As much as I was impressed, I must admit that this level of automation is driven by the high cost of labour and land in Europe, especially in Switzerland. In North America one will find only minimal automation in the assembly process and I want to focus this article on how you can maximize the performance of your ‘traditional’ assembly workplace.
Many assembly areas are built around a simple bench or pedestal to raise the cabinet to a more ergonomic working height. The assembler collects the cabinet parts (gables, top, bottom and back) and places them on the bench. Then he selects the hardware for the gables and mounts it. Glue application and assembly is the last step. Sounds simple enough, right?
Before.
Here is a picture of a typical assembly station.
I am sure that all the required parts and tools are around somewhere, but depending on the cabinet to be built, the assembler has to hunt for the right parts, hardware and maybe even for tools. If you ask your assembler to describe his work process and he uses words like ‘look for,’ ‘go,’ ‘collect’ or ‘search,’ you know he is ‘wasting’ time on unnecessary steps.
Like other areas of your production, the assembly process can be optimized, but it may not be as simple as looking at each individual process and try to speed it up, like you would do with a machining process. In the assembly many different parts come together from different areas of the plant and the trick to an efficient assembly process is to make these parts available to the assembler in a timely and organized manner to eliminate time spent looking for parts. We also want to make sure that all the required tools are always there when you need them. This is actually no different when assembling a base cabinet or a CNC router or a car and especially the car companies have spent a lot of money trying to optimize their processes.
The kitchen manufacturer Beckermann in Cappeln, Germany has analyzed and optimized the routes necessary to complete a standard order. They found that on average the assembler had to walk a total of 115 meters to complete the order. After consultation and workshops with the employees the workflows and material storage were consolidated. This led to a 65% reduction of the required walking distance from 115 meters per order to 40 meters per order. Assuming a standard walking speed of 1.8 m/sec this translates into a time saving of 42 minutes per shift, enough time to complete six more cabinets at an average time of seven minutes per cabinet.
After.
As you can see in the other picture of the redesigned assembly workstation compared to the original assembly area, the station is now much more compact, all parts and tools are readily available, and the work area is well lit and organized.
How do you go about getting the information to start this optimization process? Your operators are the experts. They know exactly what is necessary to do the job and they will have many good and valuable ideas to increase their efficiencies in the workplace. As with Beckermann it helps to have an experienced facilitator set up a structured process that starts with collecting the required information, evaluating the current process steps and developing the improvements together with the operators, which will lead to buy-in from them as well.
This moderator can be an internal or external consultant, but he has to be familiar with the different analytical tools relevant for the process to be optimized. During the workshop at Beckermann, the consultant started with an activity analysis according to the EKUV principle (eliminate, combine, re-arrange, simplify) and a work path analysis, while familiarizing the operators with the 5S philosophy (sort, set in order, systematic clean, standardize, sustain) at the same time.
The difficult part is to get the process started, but once the changes take hold it is incredible what improvements are possible. Apart from gaining process efficiencies that directly affect your bottom line, the improved workplace moral that comes from including the operator in the design process and letting them take ownership of these changes is maybe even more important.
Christian Vollmers is the president of HOMAG Canada Inc.
He can be reached at Christian.Vollmers@homag-canada.ca or visit the website at www.homag-canada.ca
