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 Writing a new chapter
Exide’s battery plant in Kansas City took a step in the right direction by placing the fate of its lean manufacturing initiative in the hands of its workers.
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The manufacturing economy stinks and their employer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April, but you wouldn’t know it by stepping foot on the plant floor at Exide Technologies GNB Industrial Power in Kansas City, Kan.
At this lead-acid vehicle battery maker, you notice optimism and a can-do attitude as much as you do the production machine fires that melt lead blocks into slick, silvery water that pours into parts molds.
This genuine happiness can be traced to the company’s lean manufacturing initiative, Exide’s Customer-focused Excellence Lean Leadership (EXCELL), which started in April 2001, one year before the financial restructuring. More specifically, the feeling is the result of plant workers’ involvement with lean and their first-hand use of tools such as kaizen, 5-S, error-proofing, standard work, Six Sigma and Total Productive Maintenance.
Buoyed by lean’s positive impact, plant employees are moving forward.
“When the company filed, people had some minor fears,” says hourly worker John Burch. “But as a week or two or a month passed, everyone saw that lean was here to help us and make us even better.”
Why? Just because Why do plant floor workers like EXCELL? A big reason is . . . “just because.”
Prior to lean, hourly employees generally played a passive or secondary role in plant improvement efforts. If they noticed a problem or wished to question standard procedures, half the time they kept the problem or idea to themselves.
“If they did pass it on, the standard comeback was, ‘Just because,’” says Burch. “Can we make a change? ‘No.’ Why? ‘Just because we’ve always done it this way.’”
If a problem did call for a change, hourly workers felt left out. A supervisor would farm out an improvement project to an engineer, who would survey the situation and make a fix or redesign with little or no input from machine operators. The change would be elaborate and pricey, but not necessarily an improvement.
Today, hourly workers are leading dynamic, cost-effective change. Three-quarters of production workers participated in at least one kaizen (continuous improvement) event in the past year. Production and maintenance workers regularly submit ideas for projects. And, two young operators — Burch and Ed Chmidling — now serve as full-time “lean champions.” They run lean events, train co-workers and serve as a conduit between labor and management on lean issues.
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Eliminating non-value-added time: Lean lets people do what they do best
Exide/GNB managers think plant workers like EXCELL so much because it allows them to do what they do best.
Assembly line workers no longer have to stop what they are doing and walk across the plant to a tool storage area or across the parking lot to a building where materials are stored.
One operator says it wasn’t uncommon to walk a few miles during a 12-hour shift to replenish supplies.
Today, as part of the lean initiative, material handling specialists work closely with production workers and deliver everything that’s needed to point-of-use bins and carts.
“If I’m a cell burner or plate wrapper, I burn or I wrap. Going to get material takes me away from my area of expertise. It’s wasted time,” says lean manufacturing manager Ken Mestemacher. “Material handlers concentrate on that non-value-added time and make us more efficient.”
Brenda Watson, one of three material handlers assigned to the second-shift assembly area, relishes her role.
“I have to know what’s going on — what’s running, what they are going to change to,” she says. “I have to prepare for the next run or shift. I enjoy taking care of the people in my area.”
Point-of-use stations provide an extra benefit because employees — rid of long walks and long waits — no longer feel the need to stash supplies.
“When we went this way, we asked everyone to go through their lockers, toolboxes and other spots and turn those items in,” says materials manager Troy Livingston, noting that one worker used the ventilation system as his supply spot. “We found there was three months’ worth of inventory in hiding. For them, the old way was piece of mind that, ‘I’ll be able to do my job because I’ll have all of my stuff.’ Point-of-use eased those worries.”
Maintenance people also benefit in the revised inventory system. Tool and parts crib employees now assemble kits for mechanics’ rebuild projects and preventive maintenance tasks.
By becoming more efficient in the way materials are handled and distributed, the plant has reduced inventory 50 percent and increased turns 50 percent.
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Workers’ use of lean tools in the past 18 months helped the plant: • cut scrap and waste 45 percent, inventory levels nearly 50 percent and injuries more than 50 percent; • improve uptime 25 percent, productivity nearly 20 percent and on-time shipments 15 percent; and, • earn EXCELL’s Copper certification (the first Exide plant to achieve it) and close in on Bronze status.
Here is a sample of Kansas City workers’ involvement in EXCELL.
No more heavy lifting Ever lift 40,000 pounds by hand? Operators in the Exide/GNB plant’s casting and pasting departments did on a daily basis.
Casting machine operators grabbed 65-pound blocks of lead off of a cart — 300 blocks during a 12-hour shift — and deposited them into melting pots. That’s 19,500 pounds, but the job was only half done. The molten lead poured into molds that formed grids, the skeleton of a lead-acid battery. The same operators took the grids — another 19,500 pounds — and placed them on carts.
The carts would then go to pasting operators, who loaded grids onto machines that filled the grids’ holes with a muddy mixture of lead oxide, acid, water and a bonding material. They loaded the heavier, filled grids onto another cart.
“At the beginning of the day, it’s not too bad. But by the end of the day, you go home sore,” says Chmidling.
Members of a kaizen team — a dozen or more workers (at least half from the hourly ranks) who go on a two- to five-day idea crusade — came up with a better way.
For the casting department, team members developed a pneumatic lifting tool that carries the lead blocks to the pot. They also created a “cassette” that mounts to the casting machine and catches the grids.
When the cassette is full, a forklift grabs and carries it either to the pasting department or stacks it on other cassettes in a holding area. The forklift can attach the cassette onto the pasting machine, which automatically loads the grids. Another cassette sits at the end of the line and catches filled grids.
“If you have the same job but don’t have to lift all that weight, you quickly become a lean fan,” says Burch.
Cassettes are expensive (in the thousands of dollars), but it’s a drop in the bucket since the idea addresses safety issues, raises productivity, and eliminates the need for pallets and other stacking media.
On the line that wraps and seals filled grids with fiberglass coating, a Total Productive Maintenance event also addressed a lifting problem.
In this area, operators would hoist a large, 50-pound guarding cage when a plate jammed. The task was unruly since the average operator is a 5-foot-4-inch woman. Working with maintenance mechanics, a hatch was cut into the cage, allowing quick, easy and safe access.
Quick and easy adjustments Many of the plant’s lean ideas are exceptionally inexpensive.
Burch and other members of a kaizen team developed a basic solution to a problem on a machine that trims excess material from a grid.
“The device that centered the grid for trimming was high maintenance,” says Burch. “It had two pistons and two arms that centered the grid. Operators had to loosen three or four bolts on each end to adjust it. It was such a hassle that some operators didn’t mess with it.”
That led to poorly trimmed grids.
This kaizen team thought outside the box and outside the plant, getting inspiration from a local amusement park.
“The Worlds of Fun park has a water ride called ‘Fury of the Nile.’ The ride has bumpers on it which center the inner tubes and guide them where they are supposed to go,” says Burch.
Based on the team’s designs, engineers built guides for the trim machine. Pistons, arms and pneumatics are no longer needed. And if an adjustment is required, quick-pull pins replaced the bolts.
This improvement cost $33.
Breathing easier, safer Lead is a critical component in the manufacturing process at the Kansas City plant, but it’s also an area of great concern.
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In comes TPM, out goes downtime Reactive maintenance can supply a substantial adrenaline rush, but mechanics can get pretty burned out when stuck in constant firefighting mode. Mechanics at the Kansas City plant are able to breath a bit easier as the result of EXCELL, especially its Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) tool.
TPM lets maintenance workers know they aren’t alone in the battle to increase machine uptime and productivity. They and production workers are in it together.
To that end, operators are responsible for monitoring the health of their machines. Color-coded gauges lend a hand. Operators, as part of their daily routine, examine the gauges to make sure pressure, temperature and other readings are within a predetermined range. If they aren’t, a mechanic can be called in to check for a problem before it leads to a breakdown.
“Gauge marking is a simple concept,” says engineering and maintenance manager Brian Rooney. “If it’s within the green portion of the gauge, it’s OK. If it’s not, it’s not OK.”
Operators also are involved in lubrication and filtration, which lets mechanics focus on issues such as redesigning and reconfiguring components and installing machine diagnostics.
Prior to EXCELL, reactive work constituted 75 percent of maintenance work orders. Today, it’s 33 percent. This has raised uptime from the “70 to 80 percent” range to nearly 99 percent.
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Workers exposed to excessive amounts of lead — from airborne oxide dust or handling of oxide-laden grid paste — can experience anemia, nervous system dysfunction, kidney problems and hypertension. Lead is also transferable. Workers can contaminate others by passing on lead-laden work clothes and materials.
Pasting operators keyed several lean projects that reduced lead exposure and contamination risks.
In the pasting department, two overhead mixing machines make 2,400 pounds of paste at a time. In creating a batch, the dry, rust-colored oxide component dropped into the spinning mixer slightly before water was added. This action created a puff of lead dust. A kaizen event changed the process so that the water was given a five-second head start. This reduced airborne lead levels in this area nearly 60 percent.
Also in pasting, operators must fill out five checklists that chronicle a shift’s production figures, first-piece inspection numbers and cleaning routines. These were paper-based and passed in to supervisors. Not only was this excess paperwork, but it was messy and dangerous since operators filled out the checklists with gloved hands coated in the muddy lead mixture. Office workers came in contact with the contaminated paper.
The solution? Operators now use a China marker to fill in laminated checklists posted on a board in the work area. A supervisor comes by at the end of the shift and records the numbers on a single sheet of paper.
Such ideas have lowered the average employee blood lead level to 15 micrograms per deciliter. The nationally accepted level for industrial plant employees is 50.
Seeing things clearly The bottom line? Lean helps plant floor workers pinpoint issues that impact them, the product and the customer.
“I kind of associate our lean program with my glasses,” says Burch. “For years, I thought I saw fine. Then I went to the eye doctor and he said I needed glasses. Once I put the glasses on, I saw how bad I was seeing. That is kind of how it is with lean. You might be doing your best, but until you start tearing it down and seeing where you can get better, you aren’t seeing the whole picture.”
This Exide facility now sees the big picture, and does so through the eyes of its plant floor workers.
This article appeared in the October/November 2002 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright, 2002.
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