created dust and caused more defects in the body. This was replaced
with a simple seed knife on a dampened area, which resembles
shaving. Together with standard work, this improved direct run
quality from 82 to 97 percent and reduced airborne dust. In 2003
alone, the paint department changed every piece of equipment in
the shop while painting cars, built a wet wall that added humidity to
reduce dust, eliminated a top coat, which saved $10 per vehicle,
used a balance chart across three booths to reduce labor, reduced
recoats/repaints, and added the seed knife process.
◆ This medium-sized project brought a new concept in material han-
dling to Georgetown’s body shop, where subassemblies are welded
and then brought to the final body station where the whole body is
welded. The concept is minomi(parts only), which translates into
something like a peanut without a shell. In this case it is transferring
the part without any container. The big bulky containers moved by
forklifts are gone. Steel-stamped body parts to be taken for welding
are hung individually on various kinds of racks with no containers.
This “parts only” storage and delivery system first developed by Toyota
in Japan is a breakthrough in material handling. It eliminates contain-
ers, thus reducing the waste of loading and unloading them, gets rid
of forklift trucks (using tuggers instead), presents parts better to oper-
ators—reducing motion waste, damage, ergonomics problems—and
reduces the number of process steps for material handling.
◆ One example is a hanging minomiin which the parts are hung on
a rack on wheels as they are produced. In the traditional approach
you press, convey, store, convey, and thus handle three times.
Georgetown developed a cartridge system in which the cartridge is
line-side in welding. The tugger slides the parts into the cartridge,
which is a rack on wheels; it is brought over to the next operation;
and then the parts are gravity fed to the operator one by one. Now
the storage location is on the side of the line and the intermediate
storage area is gone, also freeing space and reducing inventory.
The process started with a model area, which Georgetown called a
“schoolyard” for learning minomi. They selected relatively easy
parts, easy to stack and to move and store. This freed up space by
150 square feet, created better visual control, eliminated a forklift, and
presented parts in exactly the orientation needed for the operator.
Ergonomics was improved, since the parts are loaded at the same
height each time. Repacking versus this cartridge system reduced
labor by 34 percent and inventory by 49 percent. Projected savings
when this was spread throughout were 40 percent workability
ergonomics improvement (based on a computer ergonomics
model), 70 percent on racking, 5 percent on associated conveyance,
singke
(singke)
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