MIS and SPC: A Match Made in Heaven

Statistical process control began in the early 1920s, lead by Walter Shewhart, an American engineer and physicist. During World War II, the well-known Edward Deming helped improve the quality and output of strategically important products for the U.S. war effort using statistical process control. It is commonly known that statistical process control, or SPC, can be a valuable approach to increasing manufacturing output, decreasing waste, and increasing product quality. But it can also be used to manage other nonmanufacturing processes - processes that still have an output, but not necessarily a product. These processes include converting quotes to orders, converting shipped products to billable invoices, or meeting on-time delivery goals. The modern management information system (MIS) automatically collects the information necessary to objectively measure converting and business processes for increased throughput, decreased waste, and increased quality. The information is there, but sometimes the tools, knowledge or drive to get at the information is not.
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5 Why's

Ask and you shall receive. Hmm. I'm not sure how true this is, but if you don't ask, you're unlikely to learn much. And this is the topic of our Lean tool this month.

The Root Cause Analysis can sound like a complex task just based on the name itself. But it doesn't have to be. For Kaizen events or any team-based process improvement activity, the 5 Why's can be a quick and effective method for determine the root cause of many problems.

Green Seas
But first, a small diversion. In 1987 I worked for a ship building company that designed the Staten Island ferries. As a summer intern, I was given the unenviable task of determining the causes of "green seas." In the ship building industry, green seas are a major design consideration. If you've ever watched Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch, you may know what I'm talking about.

Green seas is solid water breaking over the bow of a ship. In the nautical world, this is bad and ship designers spend a great deal of time and money designing ships for specific regions of the world that avoid allowing green seas over the bow. My job for 10 weeks at $10 an hour was to do a fault tree analysis of the design conditions that allow green seas to occur. With an understanding of these root causes, efforts could be made to prevent green seas. The fault tree analysis is a tedious and complicated method for finding root causes. It was developed by engineers and scientists to prevent intolerable faults in such applications as nuclear power plants.

Too complicated for a small team at a printing plant looking to prevent scumming on a particular stock.

The Wii Game Console
In come the 5 Why’s. I love this approach because it is so effective and quite straight forward to facilitate. The approach is quite simple. Take your problem, defect or situation and ask Why five times.

Why are there no Wii consoles left for my childrens’ Christmas gift? I got to the stores too late.

Why did I get to the stores too late? I worked through the last two weekends.

Why did I work through the last two weekends? I was approaching a deadline to get Lean on Print mailed.

Why was I approaching this deadline? The deadline was moved up in the month due to the Holidays.

Why was the deadline moved up? No one will read Lean on Print Christmas morning.

So a potential root cause for not being able to get a Wii game console today is because my readers won’t read Lean on Print Christmas morning. Is there anything I can do about it now? No, but next year perhaps I will consider either postponing Lean on Print until after the holidays, or better manage my time before the holidays.

The 5 Why’s can be extremely effective in determining root causes. Try going down different paths in your questioning. As facilitator, it is up to you to manage the process to generate viable results. Give it a try at your next opportunity and let us know how it went.

Measure It!

If it's not measured, how do you know how you're doing? Do a quick debrief on any of your recent failed or marginal projects and you may find that proper measurements could have changed a marginal project into a wildly successful project. This is certainly not limited to Lean projects, but to any activity where change of some kind is expected.

Time to XXXX
Time to market, time to good copy, time to invoice. So many Lean initiatives can be measured with time. (Check out the A-Delta-T method of measuring and reducing process time.) Time is a universal measurement that everyone understands and can generally be easy to measure.

Make Ready Waste
Material waste reduction is a tremendous opportunity in the printing, labels, and packaging industry and is an area where proper measurement is key. Measurements can be manual or highly automated with products like QTMS.

Performance
Arguably, nothing motivates a team better than performance measures. Whether that team is the New England Patriots or your finishing department team. Real time measurement of performance against plan is key to the productivity of any team. How can the team perform to standard if they cannot measure themselves against that standard? The New England Patriots have it easy. They always know where they stand whether 13 points ahead or 1 point behind. It is obvious and it motivates them to perform (or not.) Production teams should have that same real-time feedback on their performance against plan. Are they meeting the make ready time for a specific run? Is their down time within the time allowed in the pricing for the customer?


I would be interested to hear your comments on measurements. What works, what doesn't, and how measurements have benefited or doomed your projects.

Volume 1, Issue 6

Paper Mills Could Be Stealing Your Copies!
Would you know it if some of your mill rolls were out of specification? Specifically, would you know that your paper basis weight is higher than stated? What I call a “heavy roll.” Most web printers do not know this until it is too late. You’ve allocated five rolls for a job and your lead pressman assumes good count has been made at the end of the five rolls. Later in the day the bindery manager comes back to the pressroom complaining of being shorted.

“I used all of my issued stock and my waste was within plan,” said the lead pressman. “You must have gone over your planned waste at the binder.”

“My waste was just fine, but my good copies are 200 short,” replied the bindery manager.

Is this full and frank conversation common in your shop? Who’s right and who’s wrong? If the mill is stealing your copies, they may both be correct.

Counting on a web press without a dedicated counting system is generally a pressman’s gut combination of many data points; gross count, assumed yield per roll, perceived make ready and run waste, etc. Yield per roll is dependent on a fixed caliper and roll weight. The standard measurement for yield is the paper basis weight (PBW) assuming the weight and width of the roll are fixed. This is where it gets interesting.

Web rolls are purchased by the pound but you sell it to your customers by the copy which is ultimately tied to the length of paper on that roll. You also purchase a specific PBW from the mill which extrapolates to a certain length or yield per roll. This is what your lead pressman has in his head. However, if the actual PBW is higher than stated, 53# versus the stated PBW of 50#, then assuming roll width and roll weight are constant, the only other variable is paper length – it’s shorter!

Less linear feet = less yield

And this is how mills inadvertently steel copies from your press runs. If your actual PBW is not at or below the agreed upon PBW that you purchased, you will run short.

What does this have to do with Lean Manufacturing you may wonder? A major portion of lean is mistake-proofing the process, or Poke-Yoke if you remember an earlier edition of Lean on Print. The basis of mistake-proofing is identifying errors before they become defects. The defect in this case is a short run. The error is a high paper basis weight in one or more of your rolls. The trick is to identify this error. QTMS iQ Paper will track PBW roll by roll, letting the press operators know exactly what the actual PBW is versus the PBW stated by the mill. Used in combination with iQ Web, the lead pressman will always produce the run to required count. And purchasing can use the data to work with the mills to ensure dead-on PBW on future deliveries.

May 2009, Volume 1, Issue 5

Mass Balance Approach

Introduction
The slim margins of printing profitability can be quickly lost during the execution of a print job without any indication from a traditional job cost detail report. Analysis of work in process (WIP) is essential as WIP value will increase as the job progresses through manufacturing and production waste becomes even more critical. An overview of the plant’s mass balance of material in versus product out can pinpoint where previously unknown losses of WIP will occur and provide the management data to prevent these losses from occurring.



Situation
Material costs represent approximately 40% of general commercial print jobs and purchasing prowess only plays a small part in the effective management of these costs – the largest non-value-added component of a print job. Job estimates predict gross material use including make-ready waste, run waste, and material handling waste. But as price pressure continues to increase, these estimating standards are frequently lowered to reflect near-perfectly run jobs. In other words, material estimates leave little margin for error.



A key performance indicator (KPI) for production managers is estimated costs vs. actual costs. Some companies compare planned costs as well since production changes late in the day define the realistic measures for the shop floor team. This KPI is only as good as the standards used to produce the estimate and plan as well as the ability to accurately capture actual costs.
The KPI of most significance for executives is job profitability – job revenue minus job costs. Reconciling this KPI into overall company profitability is a daunting or impossible task.
Where exactly have these dollars gone?



Focusing on the compounded waste for materials during production, and the movement of materials through the plant can go a long way toward reconciling these KPIs and bringing actual costs in line with estimated and planned targets.



Approach
The essence of managing material costs for maximum profitability is the mass balance. Mass balance is used across many industries and disciplines to account for material usage into and out of a process. The mass balance approach can also be used to assess paper yield for a printing plant and has been proven to reduce material waste by as much as 50%.
Ideally, the paper into the printing plant would be near equal the product being shipped out of the printing plant. However, there are plenty of opportunities to waste materials and labor costs along the way including

• Waste from printing and finishing processes


• Waste due to over production of work in process copies never needed to make delivered quantity


• Waste of re-runs due to under production


• Waste from material handling

Waste from discrepant inventory values versus actual material values.

The mass balance says that

Material Receipts = Outgoing Shipments + Waste

or

Having accurate data to solve this equation will provide a roadmap for process improvement and will, inherently, reduce waste just through employee awareness.

The mass balance approach to process improvement and waste reduction is not an all or nothing approach. Measurements and workflow management at distinct points throughout the process can make significant inroads toward waste reduction - a fundamental step in any lean manufacturing initiative. The figure below provides a typical example of mass balance of a job from press though bindery. In this case, the unused column gives an exact indication of overs and unders from press to bindery.

Waste from Printing and Finishing Processes
The conversion of white paper to printed copies can be broken down into three material categories

1. Make ready waste
2. Run waste
3. Good copies.

The printing process will always be an area of significant waste. A rough estimate of material usage can be collected by employees via press copy counter counts recorded on a time sheet or traditional shop floor data collection. However, there are specific areas where material waste occurs and these will be highlighted in your mass balance discrepancies. These areas include slab waste from roll stock, sheet waste taken off the stack pre-feeder, tabbed sheetfed waste at the delivery, and signature waste post-folder on a web press. These waste areas are lost in the good count. Signature waste post-folder or post delivery on a sheetfed press is a cause of under production. In this case the copies were counted as good but in fact never made it to the next phase of production resulting in shortages and potential re-runs. Or worse, result in higher planned waste quantities in the estimating and production standards to avoid shortages – a larger safety net than needed!

Eliminating waste from finishing processes equally relies on accurate counts into and out of the process. The additional costs absorbed in WIP production demand for even more exacting control of incoming materials - the accurate control of incoming signatures and inserts is critical to preventing spoiled product.

Actions for Waste Reduction Due to Printing and Finishing Processes
Implement count control for slab waste and pre-feeder sheet waste.

Monitor paper yield
Collect gross counts into and net counts out from the process steps, MR counts, and run waste counts either through a job cost sheet, or through a data collection terminal. Manual collection of these figures is generally highly subjective and inaccurate. Automated counters that collect dead-on counts will help uncover most, if not all waste.

Implement count control for post stacker waste on sheetfed and post folder waste on web presses. There are methods for weighing this waste available from many manufacturers.
Create poke-yoke[i] methods to prevent feeding signatures, inserts, and tip-ons into the incorrect binder hoppers.

Be clear on signature counts in finishing and handle the lowest quantity signatures with the most care at make-ready.

Assess WIP at signature level when lifting jobs for planned or urgent schedule changes. It might have been possible to run press one for one more pallet of sig 2 to balance WIP on the job being run, to allow for finishing to complete the run and avoid WIP standing idle and being wasted from Material Handling.

Waste from Material Handling
The greatest opportunity for waste reduction in the area of material handling is to prevent lost product. In operations with multiple pallets of materials and incoming materials from customers and outside vendors, it is not unusual for materials to be temporarily lost causing missed schedules and at worst re-running signatures that were already produced. The mass balance approach to process improvement will identify if the materials exist somewhere in WIP, but only diligent inventory tracking and control will help locate it to prevent these problems.
There are often significant savings to be made in this area since products lost have large added values from the printing process on top of the original material costs and the losses relate to entire pallets of products that get misplaced. The need to re-run the missing signatures to meet delivery deadlines incur all the additional losses described in the under production section below.
Waste Due to Over Production
Production of work in process copies never needed to make delivered quantity can be the largest discrepancy in a plant mass balance. Over production is one of the seven forms of waste as defined in lean manufacturing[ii]. Over production of good copy can be the greatest opportunity for elimination through the mass balance approach to process improvement. Prevention of over production, however, can only be accomplished through dead-on good count accuracy, controlled material handling and overall production workflow control.

Actions for Waste Reduction Due to Over Production
1. Implement a good copy count program across all material consuming equipment that accurately collects all gross counts less waste streams as described in the sections above.
2. Implement workflow control with kanbans[iii] between operations or with manual or electronic tracking of materials locations and quantities.
3. Provide clear visual signals to employees at each step in the workflow that clearly states
a. How much was produced at the previous step
b. How much needs to be produced at the next step
c. What waste is planned for the current operation.

Tight controls and accurate measurement of waste during the final finishing processes often have a cascading effect on printing. All subsequent jobs can be produced with a smaller bindery over allowance, resulting in significant savings.

Waste of Re-runs Due to Under Production
Just as costly to the bottom line is under production of copies to make delivered quantity, which also causes significant schedule disruption. Under production will not only require re-runs – causing additional make ready and material handling waste – but disrupt the job(s) that is lifted, also causing additional make ready and material handling waste. A plant mass balance can and will help avoid under production.

Actions for waste reduction due to under production are identical to over production actions – dead-on tracking and collection of material counts.

Waste from Discrepant Inventory Values versus Actual Material Values.
If the rule from above is to track and control inventory, the corollary is to know how much you have. Discrepant inventory can come from two areas:
1. Improper receiving of materials into inventory and
2. Inaccurate counts supplied on shipping manifests.
Unless the receiving department counts and weighs all incoming materials from paper suppliers, outside vendors, and customers, a printing company will have discrepant inventory values. The key to waste reduction, however, is to prevent these discrepant values from causing short runs in later stages of the production process. It is imperative that discrepant material values are caught during the earliest stages of the printing process. In most cases this is during printing.
Many press operators assume that the production yield of good count is directly related to what they believe is the incoming material quantity – rolls or sheets. For example, a web operator may assume a 38”, 700 lb. roll of paper with a known basis weight will yield a specific number of signatures. However, if the mill delivers a slightly heavier basis weight, the yield will be lower causing a potential re-run from under production which in turn can cause the waste described above. The same can be said for a sheetfed process if the incoming sheets are unknowingly short sheeted.

Actions for Waste Reduction from Discrepant Inventory Values
1. Implement a good copy count program at the first step of the printing process.
2. For web presses, the calculation of basis weight can be achieved through mechanical or electronic measuring of the web entering the press. This can be compared to the actual cut-off count for on-the-fly reporting of basis weight. Some web press consoles provide this information and all web presses can be retrofitted for this functionality after market.

Benefits
Managing material use, both raw materials and WIP during production, can yield material waste reductions of 50%. Any program to reduce waste can have dramatic effects on a printing operation. Any waste reduction will go directly to the bottom line and towards increased profitability. Shigeo Shingo, one of the founders of the Toyota Production System, today called Lean Manufacturing, was quoted, “the greatest waste is the waste we do not see.” The benefit of the mass balance approach to process improvement is to expose this waste. Material in less product out equals waste and waste equals lost profits – can you afford not to investigate this in your operation?

Why does the mass balance approach work? It exposes the waste reduction opportunity across a plant in a way that is intuitive, quantitative, and precise. The mass balance provides exposure to opportunities for process improvement and, when shared real-time with production operators and managers, will prevent waste from being produced.

Find Out More
The methods outlined above can be accomplished through diligent management and attention to the details of production counts and material movement. This method also lends itself to automated data collection and material tracking. QTMS iQ is a dedicated shop floor data collection, machine interface, and production workflow solution that is proven to measure a printing plant mass balance and to provide timely, accurate and detailed information, by job, on the opportunities to implement process improvement. iQ provides a real-time snapshot of plant workflow and can alert operators and management to the indicators of waste described in this approach.

[i] Poke-Yoke is Japanese for mistake-proof. It is one of the many tools of lean manufacturing.
[ii] The six other forms of waste (muda) are transportation waste, inventory waste, waste of motion, the waste of waiting, the waste of over processing, and the waste of defects and rework.
[iii] Kanban is a signaling system. As its name suggests, Kanban historically uses cards to signal the need for an item. However, other devices such as plastic markers (Kanban squares) or balls (often golf balls) or an empty part-transport trolley can also be used to trigger the movement, production, or supply of a unit in a factory. (Wikipedia, 2007)

April 2009, Volume 1, Issue 4

Zero Quality Control


Tell your prospects you have Zero Quality Control and they will likely pass over you for your competitor. But Zero Quality Control is exactly what any process should strive for and can achieve with an understanding of source inspection and Poka-yoke systems. Poka-yoke is Japanese and roughly translates to mistake-proofing.


Quality control in many companies can be defined as the corrective actions taken to manage defects. An error occurs causing a defect, information on the defect is gathered and fed to quality control, and corrective action is taken. In a Zero Quality Control environment an error occurs, feedback takes place at the error stage and corrective action is taken before a defect occurs. The underlying premise is the distinction between error and defect.


An error is the action or circumstance that causes the eventual or immediate defect. For example, plate scumming or smearing which results in ink on the non-image area of the substrate is caused during a press stop when the non-image area of the plate dries and becomes sensitized to ink. The error is the dry non-image area. The defect is ink on the page in the non-image area. There are many reasons why this error occurs, but identifying the error before the defect occurs and instituting corrective action is at the heart of Zero Quality Control.


Poka-yoke systems can be employed to identify errors. Poka-yoke systems do not need to be expensive, nor do they need to be purchased. Poka-yoke systems can be checklists. Checklists are used to prevent one from forgetting a step in the process. Forgetting the step is the error. The checklist identifies the error and prevents the defect. A checklist may accompany a job bag with items on it like proof approved, stock ordered, scheduled for production, outside purchases ordered, etc. Without a signed proof, for example, a defect of misspellings, wrong colors, or wrong stock may work its way into production. The checklist, implemented and managed properly, can prevent these defects by calling out the error.


Poka-yoke systems can also be more complex. Prism’s QTMS iQ Web System has a poka-yoke device in its counting system. Counting hardware is not infallible; therefore iQ software compares the counts at multiple points throughout the press. When the counts do not match, a signal is presented to the crew and the proper good copy count is chosen until the discrepancy is found. The error is a bad count at one point along the process. The defect is an inaccurate good copy count. Signaling the error prevents the defect.


For further reading, I highly recommend ­Zero Quality Control: Source Inspection and the Poka-yoke System, by Shigeo Shingo, Productivity Press.





Toyota and the PIA Continuous Improvement Conference


On April 5th I had the opportunity to attend the Printing Industries of America’s Continuous Improvement conference in Lexington, Kentucky. The highlight of the conference, by far, was an in depth tour of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, TMMK, in Georgetown. This 176 acre building is massive. The process starts from rolls of sheet metal and ends with new Camrys, Solaras, Avalons, and Venzas.


We saw firsthand the application of Poka-yoke systems through the use of the Andon cord and corresponding board.


The Andon cord runs the length of the production line and is pulled by any employee to signal an error, defect, or any other production issue. The cord triggers a light board that directs team members, team leaders, and group leaders to the area to solve the issue. The Andon cord can and does stop the entire production line. The cord is pulled tens of thousands of times per shift and employees are encouraged and congratulated when the cord is pulled.

The production line is built from teams of up to five employees that rotate their jobs every couple of hours. One of the five is a team lead, multiple teams have a group leader, and multiple groups have a manager. The plant runs two shifts with two hours between shifts for overtime. Breaks and lunch are plant wide and the entire production line stops during these times.

The tour was complemented by supporting seminars of the Toyota Production System. If you were not one of the close to 200 attendees at this year’s conference, I highly recommend attending next year.

March 2009, Volume 1, Issue 3

Change vs. Practice

Lean times drive Lean business practices. And Lean business practices usually mean change. In my 18 years of practicing Lean methods in the front office and on the production floor, nothing has been more difficult than making change a practice. I like to think of a practice as something we do automatically without thought. A practice is the way we do it. Great managers are gifted at turning change into practice. The consultants, subject matter experts, and teachers can design and institute the change, but only the great manager can turn that change into a practice.

Dr. Shigeo Shingo, one of the inventors of Just-In-Time along with Mr. Taiichi Ohno, has been my teacher of Lean since 1990. Unfortunately, that was the year of his passing at 81 years of age. So my studies were through his many translated books published by Productivity, Inc. Dr. Shingo had many books translated into English covering such topics as SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die), Poke-Yoke (Japanese for mistake-proofing) and industrial engineering perspectives on the Toyota Production System (since renamed Lean Manufacturing.) Dr. Shingo understood the importance of practice. So much so that he designed a simple group activity that highlights the learning curve we all know but sometimes don't identify and accept. Those of you who have heard me present "Streamline Before You Automate" at conferences have taken part in this activity. Use this at your next management team meeting. It only takes 10 minutes, but leaves an indelible understanding of the learning curve. It helps you manage through change.

Materials:

• Index cards - 10 each per team of two
• Graph paper with the x-axis labeled "Seconds per Card" and indexed 1-25, and the y-axis labeled "Number of Cards" and indexed 1-10.
• Watch with a second hand for each team of two. Or one stop watch projected on a screen or wall.

Procedure

• Have the group divide into pairs and distribute 10 index cards and 1 graph paper to each team.
• One team member keeps time and charts progress, the second member executes the process.
• Ask each team to write "Graphic Arts" neatly and consistently on each card while the timer plots the number of seconds it takes to write each card. Use a "dot" for this graph then connect the dots.
• Now make a process improvement. Cut the number of letters in half and ask the team to write the same thing on the reverse side, but every other letter, starting with the "r" in Graphic Arts. No fair writing this first on the conference room table and copying it!
• Again, the timer plots the number of seconds it takes to write each card. Use an "X" for this graph and then connect the X's.
• Review the results

The resulting graph should look something like this.

The process was drastically improved - a 50% reduction of work steps. Yet most of the teams didn't realize any savings until a few tries. Eventually, the cycle time is reduced by about 50% as well. Now compare this to the last significant change you made at your company. Think of the pushback you received when it took longer, produced inferior results, or turned off a customer. Were you steadfast in instituting the change to allow the team to make this a practice? Or was the change abandoned?