April 11, 2011 Courage My Love

Another weekend of freakin rain, I have abandoned all hope of gardening and have taken up carpentry. Seriously, I am building a fucking Ark.

It was a low energy weekend, I finished all the Jack Liffey books I could get my hands on. A good author cannot write fast enough to satisfy the reading dragon inside me. Now I am reading another Scandinavian book, well sort of Scandinavian, the author is American but it is set in Denmark and since the author has lived there for years, it follows it would have that flavour. I can't quite get into it, I keep reading and reading, waiting for it to grab me, but it doesn't.

I am trying something new at work, we have an install where we do not make the time, have never made the time and despite all arguments to the contrary, using our current process, will never make the time. So there in lies the problem, the process. It is a very simple install, 4 components (left/right/front/back), some clips and some screws. The biggest slowdown has been finding the units to do the install on, they are hidden in a random pattern in the boat discharge. If they were all in one spot, we would have a better chance. So we dig through a boat discharge (and that can be messy) and it takes forever. The install also involves some poor ergomomic postures, we cannot locate the install units any where but on the ground (really, why?).

So on goes the thinking cap, and one of the first things I know is that if you are paying an installer to install something, then that's all they should be doing. Take away anything that person does that does not directly add to the install. We have to go get the install (can someone else do that? Yes). We have other accessories that go in the install (we call them hooks, books and stickers, which is exactly what they are, throw ins - so can someone else do this? Yes).

Normally one employee does 14 of these installs per night. We get paid .325 per install. That sucks, because if you do 14 you only get about 4.5 hours credit. I took two groups of two people and set them up with 6 installs in a row, each team of two would work on one install (1 person does the right front and back and the other does the left front and back) and then they move down the line to the next install and repeat the pattern. The installers no longer go and get the vehicle, no longer put the stickers on, no longer put the books or mats in the vehicle, they simply install...

The worst case scenario would be that the team did 28 installs per night, which would leave us exactly where we were, losing money on the install. Using this very simple method, the install teams are now able to do 60 installs per night. Now I have two teams of two, which would mean 120 installs per shift would pay us 39 hours. I add one person to the mix (gets the car, does the sticker, hooks, books and mat) and keeps the line going. So now we have 40 hours of labour earning 39 hours of credit, which is a fuck of a lot better than the "old" way in which we would have earned only 22.5 hours. Just have to find 1 hours worth of work credit for the guy moving the vehicles.

There is another scenario that I would like to try next time, and I believe it could increase the throughput by another 20% and best of all, reduce the ergonomic strain on the employees. If we used an elevated ramp so the installer was working in his or her "zone", in other words not reaching out or bending over, it would eliminate a lot of body stress (especially the lower back).

People are not good with change, even though they like to tell you they are, so just to add to the mix, I used the oldest, least fit, crankiest, slowest installers I had to try this experiment, and even  doing that it was a success. Hot damn hootchy mama, bring out the beer!!

Maybe more later, maybe not. Either way will take Courage my love.