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Lean Line Design
Lei • 28.März, 2008 @ 11:23 • Abgelegt unter: Forschung und Entwicklung
I walked into the meeting room and saw our engineers playing with several small cardboard boxes with teeth and holes in them on the table. At a second glance, these paper boxes turned out to be some deliberate mocked-up products, hand-carved by our technical manager to use in the Lean Line Design workshop. That is our task today: to design a final assembly line planned to go into production in 2009 for this new product related to our current line.
Lean Line Design is one key element in the Bosch Production System. We brought into the workshop with a design of the product and some basic concepts of how the product should be produced (e.g. automatic, half-manual, or manual). At the end of the day, we had a complete layout of the line, the cycle time, the shift models, etc. It was fun, and almost magical. I felt almost like going back to childhood, when we would mock up everything, from doctors and nurses doing operations at the hospital, to workers constructing buildings. Except that what we mock up here is real and serious, the line will eventually stand in the plant making actual products used in cars running on the street.
At the workshop, there were many basic yet clever engineering ideas, also, some simple yet essential math. For example, we took each step in the production process and estimate how much time each will take, and at the end summed it all up. For example, how much time would it take to grab a male part, insert it into a female part, then insert the whole assembly into a machine to be pressed together? It is not as simple as one might think, because it heavily depends on the person’s experience and the machine layout and capability. On the other hand, this estimate of time (cycle time) is one of the most critical factors in the production, because it tells us exactly how fast we can make the products to meet customer demands, which we calculated at the beginning of the workshop. That is why we needed the expert’s input of what the machine would roughly look like and we used the mocked-up products to try doing the process ourselves before agreeing on the estimates. (A more systematic way to estimate the manual labor time is called MTM and is usually used when a more detailed and precise estimate is needed). In the end we use the cycle time to decide on the number of work stations and overall lay out of the line.
The most fun part was the simulation after we finally had a complete layout of the line. An engineer acted as an operator on the line and did the whole process as fast as he could – keep in mind that he’s not trained. We timed the whole production to make sure our estimate is realistic. And then we each gave feedback on weak points of the design. Our European colleagues insisted that the line should be counterclockwise, as it was the standard. In the end, we decided to reverse it, as for right-handed people to carry out the tasks required of this line, going clockwise is much more natural. This is especially important in China, where right-handedness is dominant due to the traditional culture of suppressing anything “abnormal”. Albeit one can be trained to do the opposite regardless of one’s own working habit.
Looking at the blueprint of the line, we all felt accomplished: this is a new line for a new Bosch product in China!
7.Mai, 2008 @ 01:31
Fantastic! How etraordianry to be there from the very start of a new product, and be there till the very end when the teams project is finally in the hands of the consumer.
6.September, 2009 @ 18:57
Great site…keep up the good work.
11.September, 2009 @ 23:00
Cool site, love the info. I do a lot of research online on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,
12.Oktober, 2009 @ 05:59
Just wanted to drop you a line to say, I enjoy reading your site. I thought about starting a blog myself but don’t have the time.
Oh well maybe one day….
14.Oktober, 2009 @ 09:11
Very nice.
I could tell you similiar story.