Single piece flow-Siemens Ltd.: Calcutta

Abstract

In the ambient of increased competition coupled with the recent slow market growth, it has become imperative for us to bring down our costs in order to remain profitable. The present system of manufacturing is based on market demand projections. At times of sluggish market growth, such a system leads to undue accumulation of inventories at various stages which adversely affect the costs & profitability. In view of the above, the project on "Single Piece Flow" has been taken up under the umbrella of other ongoing Business Process Re-engineering projects in the Nashik Works of our company. Nashik Works manufactures state-of-the-art industrial electronics products in a modern and sophisticated set-up. The scope of our project has been defined as evolving a 'Pull System' of manufacturing leading to Single Piece Flow for the PLC product family of Automation Division. Single Piece Flow, in our context, essentially means a "flexible batch-size" which can be varied exactly as per customer demand. This will give us the capability to cater to very small quantity requirements of the customer. For Single Piece Flow, it is essential to establish a smooth flow of production on the shop-floor without interruptions / accumulation at intermediate stages. In the Pull system, the customer triggers the manufacturing process from Product Assembly stage backwards along the chain. By this, it is ensured that the production is done exactly as per customer requirement. As a first step towards evolving the new system, the existing process was studied in detail in order to identify the barriers to smooth flow. Also, the major contributors to manufacturing lead-time were identified. Additionally, the customer demand patterns of selected products were analyzed. These gave us the platform for evolving the new system wherein the existing barriers are removed or minimized.