TOWER MANUFACTURING OPERATIONS

CASO DE ÉXITO

TOW

ERBACKGROUND

• Tower Automotive is a leading integrated global manufacturer of engineered structural metal components and assemblies. The company supplies the automotive industry with body-structure stampings, frames and other chassis structures, as well as complex welded assemblies for small and large cars, crossovers, pickups and SUVs.

• In the early decade of 2000, the company was declared bankrupt. It was bought by an investment fund, the new owners immediately defined Tower’s main problems, those were high inventory levels and low profitability so they started a corporate program in order to improve the company’s performance.– The transformation program included 6 Sigma and continuous improvement

• LVC was hired by Tower in 2008 to support it’s new continuous improvement program and bring fast and sustainable results to the company.

• For this purpose, LVC has intervened in the following Tower plants : one in Belgium, three in Germany, three in Italy, one in Slovakia, one in Poland, two in Brazil, one in China, one in Korea and the development of a new factory in the US.

TOW

EROBJECTIVE

Stop the leakage of negative profitability and largely reduce the inventory through a Lean Enterprise Transformation in order to provide:

Flexibilidad Inventory reduction

Improved product

cost

Improved quality

New product development

Support for the strategy of EBT* combined with

inventory reduction and market share

growth.

* Earning before tax

TOW

ERRESULTS

By the time LVC began working with Tower, the company was facing problems related with high levels of inventory and low profitability. After three years they have improved to two digits in EBT and a very low levels of inventory, much less than twenty days on hand.

Global profitability increased 11 percentage points

Global Savings: 2008 $7.6M USD 2009 $17.9M USD 2010 $21.1M USD (Estimated savings)

Productivity increased 54% in some sites in 2009*

Business increased $15M USD in some sites due to efficiency increases

Inventory reduction in some sites: 2009 77% 70.3 to 16 days 2010 43% 16 to 9 days

TOW

ERRESULTS - ASSESSMENT

POTENTIAL RESULTS

• INVENTORY REDUCTION• RAW MATERIAL - 54%• PURCHASED PARTS - 48%• STAMPED PARTS - 86%• FINISHED GOODS - 43%

• PRODUCTIVITY• LABOR - 27%• DOWNTIME - 40%

• QUALITY• REWORK - 100%

• CURRENT STATE • FUTURE STATE

VALUE STREAM MAPMANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

TOW

ERRESULTS - FLEXIBILITY SMED

17 min

14 min

12 min

6

36% Improvement

49% Improvement

1º Setup

2º Setup

3º Setup

Setup Time38’48”

Setup Time24’50”

Setup Time19’50”

TOW

ERRESULTS - PRODUCTIVITY

Before 5 Operators/Shift2 Shifts

Área Disponible

After4 Operators/Shift1 Shift60% Productivity Improvement

TOW

ERRESULTS – PRODUCTIVITY

OP10

OP20

OP30

OP40

DEPOIS 3 MO

103 PÇS/H + 103 PÇS/H DO SUB65157

Aqui é feita simultaneamente o item SUB65157

OP10

OP20

OP30

OP40

ANTES 4 MO

90 PÇS/H

PRODUCTIVITY 200%