Some of the best lean manufacturing implementations include the employees on the shop floor as active participants who are empowered to improve the process. These systems provide the shop floor employees with active real time interfaces that report on problems in the process and provide a means to record corrective actions that lead to improvements in productivity, downtime management and operational efficiency.
Improving quality and efficiency simultaneously is an extreme challenge for most manufacturers. The two issues are so intertwined that advancing one usually leads to problems with the other. To manage make progress with both, two methodologies have emerged and proven to be successful, Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. “Lean” is focused on increasing efficiency by following the Lean principles to eliminate scrap. Six Sigma improves production yields by controlling the process while reducing defects by performing a problem solving approach part of which is tracking the effectiveness of corrective actions.
Scrap reductions are always worth investing in if there is a good return on investment (ROI) available. Now more than ever in the age of environmental conservation and renewal, it pays to look at the scrap that a process is creating and create reductions if possible. One good strategy that is often overlooked is that of monitoring not only the cause of the scrap as is common in most organizations but also the corrective actions that are being implemented in relationship to the scrap.