All of us working on the GE project are down in Mankato this week at Midwest Electrical Products. It is the last week at the plant and we are to move a wire production line that will put it closer to its associated assembly and sub-assembly stations to help speed up the production flow while eliminating unnecessary inventory.
Throughout the process at our previous week here, we were asked to come up with different plans using lean production tools which are basically used to produce more and not waste. These tools developed by Toyota throughout the years include things such as:
· Value Stream Mapping
· Value and Non-Value added work
· Current State inventory/production
· Future State Inventory/production
· Spaghetti Diagrams
· Paper Doll Layouts (floor models)
We were given the opportunity to work with employees and management in more than one area of the plant and were faced with various decisions to make for the final move which will commence tomorrow AM.
Also included in our project is a possible design that will justify the elimination of an overhead crane used for loading wire cable spools on to feeding trees (first step before straighten/cut process). Although we have come up with a few different designs out of many ideas, it has for me personally become more apparent the best method is the crane that is currently used. We will all have to see what happens with that because moving it to the new production area is not an easy or cheap thing to do in a plant while it is operating.
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