How to quickly reduce manufacturing lead-times by 20% and WIP by 30%

TDK Malaga:

TDK is a recognized leader in the capacitor industry. The Malaga factory, in Spain, designs and develop customized capacitors for various industries : Energy and Renewables, Traction, Industrial drives, etc.

The Malaga plant was facing several challenges : the covid crisis and a surge of the demand for capacitors.

Approach:

The Top management of TDK Malaga was commited to improve the performance of their company and familiar with the Theory of Constraints. Thrilled by the Goal, they decided to initiate a Theory of Constraints training programme.

That's why they contacted us. Marris Consutling organized several training sessions about the Theory of Constraints applied to Production and about the Critical Chain Project Management approach. The goal was to train the factory managers and the engineers and project managers of the R&D department to these principles.

Right after these few sessions, the managers decided to apply the 2-for-1 rule and the 5 focusing steps.

Results:

In a few months, the WIP is reduced by 30% and the lead-time by 20%. The clients get their products faster and faster and there is less frenzy on the shop floor. The orders are easier to schedule and the priorities get clearer.

Next steps:

TDK carried on their efforts and after these great results, they contacted us again. They asked Marris Consulting to organize a diagniostic of their operations in order to identify or confirm new measures to improve performance.

A 2-day on-site diagnostic was performed and several recommendations were discussed:

• Increase the capacity of the assembly process which was identified as the bottleneck, by modifying the layout and training new operators through a multi-skilling programme.
• Anticipate the bottleneck shifting from assembly to the winding process. increase the capacity of this winding process via an increase of the reliability (more manual redundancies, buffers, and improved management responsiveness).
• Improvement of the shop-floor management via the implementation of a system of cascade meetings to escalate problems quickly to the right persons.

I want the same results