sustainability and innovation, on the move

An accelerated path, which has integrated, over time and with many goals, the main kaizen tools, in a fluid and not fragmented perspective of change. In fact, Lean Thinking is an organisational paradigm that first of all requires a change of mentality and that must be implemented as a whole, paying more attention to behaviour than tools.

“That’s exactly how it is” Morganti told us. “In Aptiv we decided to experiment with the important transition from a push to a pull type system starting from a pilot project, limited to some machines and in specific departments. We implemented a traditional Kanban system using hard-copy cards, which corresponded to a production order to be entrusted to internal suppliers, thus moving from a production managed for large batches to one for small batches. As in a usual Kanban loop, the generation of the production order was activated by the emptying of a container in the Supermarket warehouse. After filling the kanban container, it was returned to the consumer station or the pieces produced were made available again in the Supermarket. Without the receipt of a kanban signal, that is, a production order, production would not be activated”.

It should be emphasised that the choice to implement a pull production system is a real challenge for the sector, especially when compared to the world industry average. In fact, a type of product with high set-up costs of plastic moulding machinery, high production volumes and low prices usually prefers a management system based on the push approach, in which the integrated vision of all production and supply is lost in favour of a segmented vision of the production flow. That is, a departmental logic is favoured that aims to optimise single operations at the expense of the overall reduction of stocks.

In the current economic and social context, on the other hand, speed and flexibility make the management of production processes very complex: despite the stimuli that come from Lean Management theories and the benefits deriving from 4.0 technologies, for many companies it remains difficult to overcome the Tayloristic-Fordist model of production they have developed. However, the organisational paradigm of a lean manufacturing company should be pulled from the market (Pull Supply Chain Strategy) and based on management by flows and not by homogeneous processes.

In Aptiv’s corporate vision, Lean Production has always been a highly strategic objective: “The elimination of stocks has always been a declared goal and, in fact, thanks to the kanban system the value of the warehouse, previously settled around 3 million Euros, has reached an average value of about 700 thousand Euros”, continued Morganti.

Morganti: “Let’s say that the system was as efficient as it was complicated and difficult to coordinate because we managed about 150 thousand hard-copy kanbans. As can be seen from the numbers, the difficulties were not only recorded in the high incidence of human error, but also in the excessive use of time and resources spent in the management of the system. The need to switch to the use of an electronic kanban system was becoming increasingly stringent”.

Imbimbo: “The application of manual kanban was extremely complex. That’s why I personally started looking for a more advanced tool to manage the system. In the meantime, the plant had also become mature to carry out a more technologically advanced step”.

Morganti: “I will say something unpopular: difficulties, if there are any, are always mental, they never belong to the software. Often people tend to blame their mistakes on technology, while the truth is that it simply highlights hidden problems, which perhaps they prefer to ignore. However, all these difficulties can be overcome by working on human capital, also thanks to the support of KanbanBOX assistance: this is demonstrated by the fact that no one would ever think of returning to the previous manual management, which is now obsolete!”

Morganti: “At Aptiv we use two applications of the kanban system: one for production, so that the latter is always in line with customer requests, and one for handling, for the standardisation of internal logistics and picking routes”.

In short, the entry of products into production is not anticipated with respect to orders, and production is regulated by the downstream stages of the production process. In this system, each department in the chain sees the downstream department as a customer and the upstream department as a supplier. In Aptiv, the planning department manages customer orders, organising them on the individual cells of the assembly department consisting of 18 machines, each of which has a stock of components sufficient to cover an hour of work. The order pulls the production from cell to cell, and thanks to the e-kanban system, creates as few stocks as possible, allowing the optimisation of the total crossing time. The consumption of materials in the Kanban Supermarket on board the assembly line generates the order to the plastic department, in charge of producing the components that need to be assembled.

Morganti: “The emptying of kanban materials in the assembly department, and the consequent request for replenishment, become production orders, visible on the KanbanBOX electronic whiteboard, continued Morganti, in a sort of system that self-generates and self-regulates, without the risk of loss of cards and, indeed, providing visibility on the work completed and work that still has to be completed. In addition to levelling the workload within the departments, we also saw a significant benefit for logistics and material picking personnel. In fact, the handling of materials takes place only after the actual consumption, which is always the same and predictable over time: the activities borne by the warehouse workers are spread over the entire working shift, making their work cycle standard and reducing physical effort”.

Imbimbo: “In 2015 we also introduced kanban for levelling the workload, so-called Heijunka. An absolute novelty, so much so that the module was made specifically for us by your developers. This is another strong point of the software: its possibility of customisation thanks to the development of real additional tools. This ability to understand, interpret and solve our needs is the added value of KanbanBOX, which derives directly from the people behind the product: management engineers with a lot of experience in Lean Manufacturing, who therefore know the application sectors and the internal problems of companies”.

Now, to improve the system and completely eliminate the incidence of human error, given the high volumes of materials handled, Aptiv is developing in partnership with KanbanBOX a project from an Industry 4.0 standpoint that uses RFID technology for radio frequency reading of the cards, to eliminate the hardware devices for reading kanban cards. The project involves the installation of card reading gates for fixed and mobile workstations on board the machine, in the two departments, and in the warehouse, with the involvement of some customers.

The combination of electronic kanban and RFID technology is able to optimise the Pull management of materials and the replenishment of the Supermarket, coming to provide a complete automation of the flow and the elimination of hard-copy labels. In fact, the RFID identification system opens new perspectives in automation techniques and, in addition to complete and real-time visibility of the flow of materials, allows you to plan and control processes with precision and efficiency, arriving at complete automation!