Jieliang phone home

BY

HARI HARA SUDHAN R

Marty Cole is a head of Manufacturingprocesses and Technology at the mobilehandset unit of Precision Electro- Tech’sDongguan, China Production Facility.

His Factory Visits were extremely valuable foridentifying ideas and opportunities.

One morning, as he arrives he finds himselfstanding behind a Yellow hat supervisor whowas scolding a line worker named Jeiliang fornot following the “TQC”.

“TQC “ is a step by step instruction sheetposted at each work station, indicating howand in what order the process engineers andmanagement team wanted the particularproduction step completed.

On enquiring, Cole finds out that Jieliang gotscolded because she had scanned a wholebunch of bar code labels and then applied themon the shields, instead of applying them on theshields first and then scanning them in.

He wonders if TQCs were made easy to followand if she had come up with a better way ofdoing things, why didn’t she tell anyone?

Precision is a Contract Manufacturer (hereafterreferred to as C/M) which means it is a firmthat produces products for another firm, oftenreferred to as Original EquipmentManufacturer (hereafter referred to as OEM)

OEMs use C/Ms to provide flexiblemanufacturing capacity and as an alternative toowning the factories themselves.

C/Ms are dependent on the ability of the hiringcustomer to completely specify the work to bedone.

Cole had an experience of 20 years ofmanufacturing experience in roles ranging fromshop floor to multiple management positionsand so was extremely well versed in the theoryand practice of lean manufacturing.

Principles of Lean Manufacturing

• Waste Elimination

• Zero Defects

• Just in Time (JIT)

• Pull instead of push

• Continuous Improvement

The term Visual Factory is used to describe how data and information are conveyed and utilized in a lean manufacturing environment.

The objective is not to introduce a system of visual communication, but to create a visual mode of Organization.

Equipment and work are arranged to promote easy communication.

Automated production tools having red-yellow-green lights on posts

Taped lines on the floor indicating proper position of movable carts.

Highly Visual Work instructions in production areas with photographs / drawings.

Visual Factory is particularly important for problem solving, as it made all the information, tools and resources necessary for identifying and solving problem easily identified.

Dongguan was Precision’s largest facility.

Cole’s visit schedule to Dongguan typically consisted of meeting with the factory management team, walking the floor and speaking with the key customer representatives who had arranged to visit the factory the same day.

TQC Charts were clearly written in English and Chinese and hung from a bar in clear plastic sleeve in front of each station.

Shapes were used to depict the 3 stages ofprocess

(1) Red Circle – Check the work of the workerbefore

(2) Yellow Triangle – You conduct your work(3) Blue Triangle – Check your own workbefore passing off the component

PCB lines occupied little less of the space of thecentral floor and the other half was dedicatedto assembly and packaging cells.

To minimize waste and increase efficiency atthe stations, the factory used a “KambanSystem”

At the front of each line there were number of signs and charts displaying line status and hourly output rate.

A suggestion box for the workers was also available.

The indirect labour and engineers had an office area where rows of desks and computers enabled them to call up data and communicate with other engineers as needed.

All IDLs had cubicles on the factory floor, with a computer in each.

Cole and his global product teams were underconstant, unrelenting cost pressure and theyput a strong emphasis on quality andproductivity, but challenges were mounting.

Mobile phones being a fast moving commoditywith very short product lifetimes, theyfrequently had to ramp up a new productionintroduction very quickly.

Managing the complex inbound supply chainfor hundreds & thousands of phones per daymade precise materials management and wasteminimization a must

marty wondered if Jieliang's decision was not followed the TQC was somehow related to why it was so difficult to implement process improvements once a line was up and running.

He also thought about Jieliang's reordering of steps.

The reason the workers were supposed to apply the barcode label first and then scan the phone body was because each phone would ultimately have a unique electronic ID burned into the circuitry.

Common sense engineering would dictate applying the label first so that the sequence would not get confused. But would Jieliangnecessarily know that?

Discussing with an engineer, it was concluded that the sequence did not matter at this point in the assembly process, and Jieliang’s method in fact resulted in a big speed-up.

TQC should be frame properly

Production method can be flexible