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1-864-877-6175 • MetalCheM-inC.CoM warning during which the green light begins to flash. At the conclusion of the cycle, the light stops flashing and turns red, and a buzzer sounds notifying the operator it is time to advance the batch of material. Various improvements to racking have been made over the years as a result of our Waste Stopper program, by which team members suggest solutions for specific waste problems. In other areas of our facility, we have implemented several Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) kaizens. Our "lean guru" often repeats the phrase, "Flow is king." We can attest to huge savings based on flow, as we've held several area- layout and a few plant-layout kaizens to establish clear linear or cellular paths of flow. Successes Realized Through Lean Our initial kaizen event included a complete revision to the layout of our small bent parts value stream area and included two new U-shaped work cells. A new packaging and inspec- tion area resulted in: a 24 percent increase in productivity, 33 percent savings of floor space, elimination of all work in process (WIP) and a reduction in team size from 11 operators to six (the other five moved to other value streams). We experienced very little pushback from our team on the changes and the philosophy of lean manufacturing, and we attribute that success to the upfront training and our patience on the implementation. The U-shaped work cell had origi- nally been set up in batch formation. Each machine typically required one operator, and that operator would fabricate parts on the machine for an entire shift. Parts would be produced in batches oftentimes taken from a cart and returned to the same cart. The U-shaped work cell was designed to eliminate batch flow, moving to one-piece or two-piece flow, and eliminating all (WIP). Raw material enters the work cell and leaves as a finished product. At the end of the day, there are only raw stock and finished parts possible in the work cell. Also, the cell was designed to use a maximum of two operators, compared to four to five operators required to run the machines prior to our kaizen. The cell was condensed further to eliminate wasted extra steps. A new 10-foot brake press was replaced by a small, used 3-foot brake press, which shaved 7 feet of unnec- essary space within the cell. Shadow boards were retrofitted with fewer tools and better POUS. "Keeping the surgeon at the table" has been another large priority; anything that takes the operator away from his or her workstation should be analyzed and, if possible, delivered to him or her at the time it's needed. This year, our focus has been to modify our process to a single order flow and to improve our staging of inbound orders to ultimately improve throughput by the optimal mix of finishes. Scheduling our extrusion orders to deliver the optimal mix for our anodizing operation was Metal Chem's Newest EN Advances ULTIMATE EN STRIPPER META-STRIP 151 has exceptionally long life for removing EN from steel, brass, and copper. ULTIMATE MATTE BLACK EN Meta-Black MidNite provides a consistent, non-reflective blackening process for EN. ULTIMATE EN for AI CONNECTORS Meta-Plate CCB and UCB improve mid- phos plating, corrosion resistance and bath life specifically on aluminum and aluminum connectors. The ONLY Company Focused on EN 1-864-877-6175 • MetalCheM-inC.CoM 30 OCTOBER 2017 — PFonline.com ANODIZING