Case Study: Industrial Textile Business

Industrial Textile Business - review of business practices and see if lean could help

This $6.0m business operating out of Sydney’s west, operating in a shrinking market, produces 5000 SKUs, using looms which have lengthy set up times. We were called in to assist, as they were running out of space. They obviously had cash flow issues as well. Production was based on out of date min-max set in the ERP. No shop floor measures, feed back loop or improvement initiatives were in place. Small team was working in silos.

After drawing value stream maps for main products groups, it was obvious to the team that particular product groups were being over-produced, against average demand levels, due to set up time considerations, locked into mix-max.

SMED and Training session in lean awareness helped to kick-start the improvement cycle. Muda – the waste of overproduction – became apparent to the team. This lead to team taking initiatives to revise min-max, twice downwards, over a six months period, using target inventory turns at SKU level, essentially not producing above customer demand. SMED initiatives, 5S, Daily KPIs measures, supported the turn around on the productivity front.

Results:

• Reduction of staff through cutting back to one shift from two.
• 11% drop in inventory level over a six month period.
• 10% to 30% drop in set up times.
• Working silos broke down, it brought the team together.