BY JARED BRINGHURST FUTURA INDUSTRIES
Here's how one company
applied lean manufacturing
principles in its anodizing plant.
This is an expanded case study on lean manufacturing and the
benefits achieved through the application of specific lean tools
and concepts in an anodizing and manufacturing environment,
as we have seen at Futura Industries.
In most cases, an organization does not have to look too far or
too deep to identify streams of waste: excess motion of employees
or equipment; defective material; employees or equipment
waiting; excess inventory; over-production; over-processing; and
transportation of material from one location to another.
Often, the people who have worked for years in environ-
ments with these forms of waste have become accustomed
to seeing or recognizing that there is an opportunity to work
more efficiently. An example could be something as simple as
a garbage can placed 15 feet from where an operator performs
the bulk of his tasks on a machine. These scenarios exist in
almost every organization. The question is, how do we elimi-
nate them?
Introductory Phase
We identified and attended several off-site training camps,
including the Lean Institute in Massachusetts and a Toyota
Jared Bringhurst is president of Futura Industries, a division of
Bonnell Aluminum, a leading manufacturer of custom-fabri-
cated and finished aluminum extrusions. Under Bringhurst's
operations leadership, Futura improved the quality of its
products and on-time delivery in the extrusion industry, while
most recently overhauling its anodizing facility. Bringhurst
shared Futura's successes at a recent Aluminum Anodizing
Council conference and writes about it here.
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OCTOBER 2017 — PFonline.com
ANODIZING
Lean Manufacturing in
Anodizing Operations