Product Changeover Improvement - Case Study (Pipe)Major Pipe Manufacturer - NSW, Australia
The Challenge
Australia’s largest manufacturer of Oil and Gas pipe was experiencing an average of 35 hours downtime during product changeovers.
This duration severely impacted the promised delivery date to customers, resulting in delayed orders and cancellations.
Coupled with the changeover issues, was the quality of product resulting from poor set ups. Defect rates on start up created excessive downtime, at both the beginning and end of a product runs.
The Solution
The Lean Six Sigma toolset revealed that a product changeover consisted of two parts:
1. The physical change of equipment and tooling
2. Setup time, where the equipment parameters were adjusted to meet specifications.
The setup period was roughly two thirds of the total time required to complete a product changeover.
The project was completed in two parts:
1. The first utilised tools such as Value Stream Mapping and Value Add / Non Value Add, to analyse the physical change of tooling.
2. The second part utilised MSA tools, to devise new processes, enabling the reduction in possible variation of tool positioning when machining.
The Results
- Total product changeover time reduced from an average of 35 hours to 5.7 hours (more than 80% reduction)
- Tool tolerances reduced to 10% of the allowable tolerance, almost eliminating all tooling issues
- Start up waste from changeovers was reduced from a range of 80% to 100% of the first coil, to between 2% to 7% (product dependent)
- Increased customer satisfaction and market value.