Infinity Team @ Dispatch
Another Infinity Team in the making during a 5S workshop. Amazing results and still continuous improvement ideas being tested after the 1st month. Fantastic!
12
Sep
Tag Archives: 5s
18
Jun
LEAN Empowerment!
How do you create an ’empowerment zone’?…a place where people can take ownership of their workplace. This includes being able to influence decisions and actions related to your work as well as the look and feel of your workplace.
Socrates said “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” LEAN tools are the quickest and most sustainable way to empower teams to take back ownership of their workplace .
A good example of this is a recent project we did using the 5S Workplace Organisation and S.M.E.D. tools to help the team take ownership of their workplace. It is a story many have heard before…ineffective multi-level communication leading to lack of accountability and teams performing below their potential.
Step 1 was to get the team to be able to influence decisions made regrading their workplace layout and equipment maintenance through visual communications. Using 5S’s they planned their workplace layout, cleared out all unnecessary items and plotted where everything should go. By demarcating ‘parking bays’ with yellow floor tape they ensured that support services always placed the bins and palettes in the same place resulting in reduced clutter and always having materials in place. Red tags were used to identified equipment faults and to generate job cards for the maintenance team to plan repairs. Action lists showing work to be done are displayed on their notice board and are discussed and updated daily.
Step 2 was to have the team create their own benchmarks regarding performance. Continually competing against yourself and focusing on beating your previous best creates a ‘winning culture’. Beating the world record is the eventual target. The team are busy creating process maps for each changeover and are already looking at ways to improve the initial times logged. They have also developed housekeeping, lubrication and operations maintenance schedules.
After a week the team has identified 18 improvements, which they want to implement in their workplace. They have prioritised them, posted them on their notice board and have an execution plan for the first two. Operator and maintenance teams are talking to each other about equipment improvements and discussions are being held with support services on how they can assist in improving the overall performance. The team is starting to take charge…a great thing to see.
01
Jun
Infinity Teams
Infinity teams are teams focused on being the best. DivFood have had some good wins with their teams in May.
The printing Infinity Teams are focusing on using Quick Changeovers and Workplace Organisation from their 20 Keys process to improve their productivity and changeover times. Here the team show their process map after reviewing deck changes. The innovations they came up with will be tested on the line before being put into ‘best operating practice’.
After implementing their 5S workplace organisation plan in their workplace. The teams are using the process to create a cleaner and safer working environment as well as to take ownership of their work area.
The DivFood fire team after winning the “Best Fire Team” of 2015. This is the second year in a row. Incredible dedication, focus and team work. Well done!
16
May
Start of 5S in Printing – Key 1
The start of rolling out a LEAN program in Vanderbijl 
this week. Part of the project is implementing 5S’ s in the DTP section. The first photo shows the team starting to reorganise their work space. They have already cleared out clutter and demarcated their equipment, installed notice boards to manage their actions lists and started categorising their ink stock. Their latest 5S audit shows an improvement in their workspace of 45% after 2 days. Fantastic job gents…and we have only just started.
Second picture shows the start of the red tag process on the printing line.
The second photo shows the start of the RED TAG exercise on a printing line. Sipho shows how the operators have highlighted faults to be corrected by the maintenance team during their routine maintenance program. Next week is the start of Quick Changeover program where the teams will design their own process maps and best practice.
