Did you know, one of the global producers of cables and assemblies was able to improve the capacity of the product line by ~35% by implementing Kanban?

The global leader was facing issues regarding reducing setup time and work-in-progress inventory. Along with that, they were also facing quality issues. This was because of the long and common product runs that they were not able to reduce lead time.

To solve this issue, the organization began by streamlining the processes and equipment. Along with that, the organization established a Kanban system in between cable processing functions required upstream processes to stop building products that couldn’t finish because of the resources and equipment running at full capacity.  

Later, the organization level-loaded the production areas via Kanban and then established new procedures. Also, 5S was implemented along with Kanban to clean and organize the machinery and areas for maximum efficiency and quick changes. 

By implementing these tools and techniques, the machine setup time that used to last for 3-12 hours has now fallen down to less than 35 minutes which added ~5 hours of additional up-time per machine, per day.

Implementing these improvement initiatives helped the organization increase the capacity of this product line by ~35%, resulting in several million dollars of potential additional sales per year. 

So have you started implementing continuous improvement initiatives that will help you be more profitable? Contact us at [email protected] to know how?