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new KPI TEEP in Lean Six Sigma

By on June 17, 2012 in Information Technology, Uncategorized

World Class OEE is generally accepted as >85%

The world class OEE performance of 85% is comprised of:

Availability = 90%

Performance = 95%

Quality = 99.9%

Research indicates that average OEE for manufacturing plants is 60%

How does your organisation compare against the ‘best in class’ performance?

Imagine what a 40% improvement in OEE (going from 60% to 85%) could do for your organisations competiveness and profitability!

Organisations are now factoring in how often the equipment is used throughout the year (24/7) – this is called the Loading.  For example if the equipment is used for 40 hours in a week (168 hours) the loading is 40/168 = 23.8%

This can be factored into the relatively new KPI – Total Effective Equipment Performance (TEEP) metric as follows TEEP = Loading x OEE

Design of Experiments Lean Six Sigma

By on May 24, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Y = f(x)

DOE was originally developed in 1930’s by Sir Ronald Fisher to improve agricultural methods Fisher used DOE to maximise the yield of agricultural crop (Y) by changing the key process inputs; fertilizers & seed type (x’s) he DOE approach allowed Fisher to understand the main effects of the inputs, and the interactions between the inputs which impact the process output

The objective is to logically organise changes to 2 or more input variables (x’s) and evaluate if any variable, or any combination of the variables, significantly affect the output (Y)

What is Design of Experiments?

A DOE is a set of tests on the process output with at least 2 process inputs, each set at 2 or more levels

The key principle behind the DOE technique is to create a perfectly balanced design which includes an equal combination of process settings

Consider the example below with 3 key process inputs, each set at the high end (1) and low end (0) of their respective specification (or process variation) limits

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Lean Development in Lean Six Sigma

By on April 28, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

The 13 Lean Development principles are:

  1. Establish customer value
  2. Front-load the Product Development process
  3. Levelled Product Development process flow
  4. Rigorous standardisation
  5. A Chief Engineer System to integrate development
  6. Balance functional and cross-functional expertise
  7. Towering technical competence in Engineers
  8. Integrate suppliers into the PD system
  9. Build in learning and continuous improvement
  10. Build a culture to support excellence and relentless improvement
  11. Adapt technology to fit your people and processes
  12. Align the organisation through visual communication,, ensuring problems are visible
  13. Enable organisational learning
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Lean started withThe Wright approach to product development

By on April 24, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Wilbur and Orville Wright ran a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio USA but set to designing and building the first aeroplane  in their spare time working in their shed!

So how did two hobbyists manage to achieve what many well funded, full time, industry backed inventors had failed to achieve?

They collected the existing knowledge on what experiments and tests had already been carried out then studied the results.

They soon realised that many thousands of hours and dollars were being spent for very little time in the air – 5000 hours of design & build time for 5 seconds air time was typical.

They identified 3 critical knowledge areas:

  • construction of the sustaining wings
  •  generation and application of power
  • balancing and steering of the machine

Between 1900 and June  1903 the brothers:

 

Devised

•Lift and drag measurement techniques for kites and gliders
•A wind tunnel
•Balances for measuring lift, drag and drift

Discovered

•Lift and drag calculations that others were using were incorrect
•Optimum wing shapes and ratios
•Optimum control surface areas
Invented
•Wing warping technology to control the plane in flight
•A highly efficient propeller
•A lightweight powerful engine
•The science of aeronautics

They conducted and meticulously recorded extensive experiments.

These often challenged and proved wrong the existing ‘knowledge’ and wisdom of the time.

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Lean Product Development

By on April 19, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

People & Partners

– Chief Engineer Role in Development phase (misunderstood in Aerospace Industry)

§ Highly experienced in Product development, small team, clear technical authority over all internal & external Eng’s, Voice of the Customer, guardian of the specifications, not a Programme Manager.  Unity of leadership
§ Decide Product & trade off between design/ Manufacturing/ Suppliers & Customer Support/ ILS so that product fulfils all requirements
§ Identify & remove Development roadblocks internal & partners/suppliers
§ Dev. schedule, product recurring costs, product reliability & op costs,

– Balance functional expertise & Programme integration

§ Programme Plateau (early concept phase & integration tasks) or Functional Plateau
(Detail design phase, cross programme optimization & learning, standardization, product/process skills)
–  Develop towering technical competence
§ Proactive hiring, early experience in other functions: Manufacturing, Customer and  Support/
§ Link to HR (Expert network, competence Mgt, specific technology dev. skills,  process)

–  Suppliers/Partners integration into Product Development

–  Build in learning & Continuous Improvement

§ Companys’ culture are mainly based on history & diff. functions (customer value,
multicultural…)

– Build a culture to support Excellence & Relentless Improvement

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Lean Set Based Engineering

By on April 13, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Detailed design  Variability in the process is reduced here through high levels of  standardisation of skills, processes and the designs themselves.  This helps eliminate waste and rework which allows greater  flexibility of capacity. Detailed standardisation also maximiseslearning and continuous improvement.

Prototype /Tools  Two sets of prototype tooling are usually produced, not to test solutions but to choose the different sub-systems and check their  integration. Engineering changes will not be accepted after this  phase. This is an intensive period for system design  manufacturing and quality engineers.

Set based engineering enables many different solutions for a design can be worked on and matured at one time.  As the development time increase and moves closer to the start of production unsuitable solutions are stopped but kept on file so potentially could be used for the next new product.  The main advantage of set based concurrent engineering is that if the design concept that is chosen fails to meet customer requirements it can be quickly replaced by a robust and mature alternative solution.

Conventional engineering usually starts with the generation of new concepts and ideas too, however the main difference is that the final solution is agreed at a very early stage of the development.  This could be before all the other component final designs are decided/understood.  Therefore, as the design stages mature if problems are found the solution may have to be reworked several times to ensure it still meets the customer requirements.  The major disadvantage of this process is that usually problems are not found until later in the development stages, sometimes as late as after the start of manufacturing.  Fixes problems that occur at this stage is much more expensive as you are now trying to change actual components instead of designs on paper.

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Lean Engineering in Lean Six Sigma

By on April 12, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized
– Manufacturing has a relatively small influence on the overall cost and quality of the product or service supplied.  Remember the Value Stream?
– When Lean principles are applied across all the functions in the value stream,   true competitive advantage can be gained. This is sometimes known as Lean Enterprise
– Lean Product Development demands an integrated multi-disciplined approach.

A Lean product development process typically has four phases:

    1. Concept  The Vision for the product produced by the programme lead   who is a technical expert  and is responsible for the product   from concept to market
    2. System design   Set based concurrent engineering looks for all possible    problems and tries to resolve them early in the process. ‘Sets’   of possible solutions are generated (diverge) then gradually   narrow as learning and understanding increases i.e. design   converges. Progressively reducing specifications and   resolving ambiguity actually shortens development time.   The system design team will be multi-functional and often   located together.
    3. Detailed design.
    4. Proto type & tooling.

 

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Lean Engineering

By on April 12, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Manufacturing has a relatively small influence on the overall cost and quality of the product or service supplied.

Remember the Value Stream?

When Lean principles are applied across all the functions in the value stream, true competitive advantage can be gained.

This is sometimes known as Lean Enterprise Lean Product Development demands an integrated multi-disciplined approach.

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Why Lean Development ?

By on April 9, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized
  • Improving your service and manufacturing systems can only give you limited gains – this is only half the opportunity
  • There is more scope of improvement opportunities if you target the engineering of your service, products and process’
  • It can be more challenging as it is not as easy to see waste and flow
  • Many organisations have implemented lean and explored opportunities in all departments (design, purchasing, engineering, finance, HR etc)
  • They feel that this is what gives them an edge over their competitors
  • Assist in achieving swifter new products development

E.g., Toyota, Ford, Nokia and others,

We understand that we are not Toyota !!!!  However, it is important to understand some of the main differences between the Toyota culture and conventional business cultures when they develop new products as it will help you see where we can make changes to grow stronger as a company.  Also, it will enable you to understand where development systems have originated from.

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Lean Engineering in Lean Six Sigma

By on April 8, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Lean Six Sigma challenges for Service and Product Development are

  • Short life cycles for service offerings, products and technologies
  • Integrated development and quality approach with suppliers
  • Customer expectations becoming more demanding
  • Technology (hard/software) becoming increasingly complex
  • Extremely high requirements for service and manufacturability
  • High impact of poor OTOQOC performance on confidence
  • High costs of development of complex services and products
  • High cost of post design changes, amendments & failures

Short life cycles for both products and technologies.

[Comment: This requires dynamic changes in product designs be managed at the sub-assembly level and coordinated across product lines to gain the most synergy for our development efforts.]

Customers have rising expectations for quality of total service [Comment: Customers don’t care if the problem is a handset or service provider.]

Increasing number of product development projects.

[Comment: Nokia has chosen to compete in all technology areas.  Since technology has not yet consolidated around one or two standards, we face the need to innovate and refresh all product lines on a regular basis.  Most of our competitors are not attempting this same approach.]

Products must be capable of manufacture in the millions.

[Comment: Mistakes cannot be made in production, right the first time is essential or we will not effectively compete in this business.]

Reliance on component parts quality from suppliers.

[Comment: We do not control our own destiny for quality but must seek exceptional partners who can contribute to our overall effort on behalf of our customers.]

Software is complex and interoperability is essential & interoperability is essential.

[Comment: Again, “right the first time” is the rule for software as well as hardware.  We also rely heavily on standards and industry partnerships to assure that we maintain seamless integration between hardware manufacturers and service providers.]

 

 

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