Team Solves Fab Labeling Issue

The Fabrication team had an issue last year that was impacting schedule and quality.

Racks were piled up with parts and unorganized, especially when work centers got behind schedule. Some racks were unstable because of heavy parts.

As a result, employees spent too much time finding parts due to lack of information on part location.

Additionally, hot parts were hard to pinpoint and use efficiently. Moreover, there was no way of knowing if a hot part was delivered from material fill.

Employees encountered productivity delays while looking for parts - estimated 150 labor hours lost per week.

That’s when a team was assembled from our Lean engineering team, Quality, and the shop floor to address the problem and find a solution.

It was a classic Lean manufacturing issue to resolve.

Working together, the team initiated several changes to improve the organization of the labeling racks and bar codes, which helped improve quality and schedule, not to mention remove frustration for workers trying to do their job efficiently each day.

The team came up with a solution. The Fab Lean team added barcodes to all racks; barcodes are now scanned and update the location field; when a part is put on a new rack, the operator scans the barcode and RFID sticker on each tracer; and hot parts can be found immediately when pulling the daily run.

The results have been remarkable. Parts are now noted, and they can find them without effort with a 25%-time savings targeted. That’s 1,875 hours of work per year or 14 minutes a week per employee with a significant annual cost savings. The goal is to expand the quality project to other areas of the Fabrication organization.