Ohike. Manufacture of precision tungsten carbide drills, endmills, and microdrills for high quality electronics and engineering clients. Make-to-stock/make-to-order, 270 staff and 400 machine tools, 2 hectares of floor space. Supplier to bulk precision users such as Toyota, Honda, as well as a national and international distributor network.
Initial state in April 2001, work-in-process 130,000 pieces, output 22,000 pieces per week, manufacturing lead time approximately 5½ weeks. The factory couldn’t keep up with demand nor manage on-time delivery. We instigated a pilot scheme on the 1/3 of the plant dealing with high volume products.
We raised output at the constraint – end tooth grinding – by 19% in the first 4 weeks and reduced the work-in-process backlog in the constraint area by 73% over 8 weeks. The photo shows the bottleneck area after we had improved it. Overall factory work-in-process was reduced by half to 65,000 pieces after 12 weeks, lead time decreased from 5½ weeks to 3 weeks over the same period.
I trained the management of his plant (and corporate management of the company) in the implementation of new work-flow methods. We gained permission for a trial, the foreman of the trial area was superlative thus we got a very good result in a very short period of time. The plant management said it couldn’t be done. We did it regardless.
This is a project made by Dr. Kelvyn himself
