Garware-Wall Ropes Ltd. applies lean thinking with a customer ...

Mastering the Lean Ropes Case Study
Client
, Garware-Wall Ropes Ltd., (GWRL)
an India-based manufacturer and exporter
of synthetic ropes and nets for a range of
recreational and industrial applications,
operates two ISO-9000 compliant factories
and has 3,000 employees.
Challenge
, The company needed to overcome an
operational performance plateau and
transform its factories to support future sales
growth. Even though sales were increasing,
profits were not. Specifically, GWRL had to
meet market pressure for shorter lead times
and better delivery performance without
adding capital equipment or workforce costs.
Solution
, A systematic application of lean
manufacturing tools through kaizen
events, such as set-up time reductions,
kanban systems, single-piece flow lines
and policy deployment.
Garware-Wall Ropes Ltd. applies lean thinking
with a customer-centric approach and improves
return on invested capital.
Garware-Wall Rope’s immediate objective was to reduce lead times, and
thereby gain an advantage in both domestic and export markets. In addition,
the company wanted better product quality, lower costs and higher on-time
delivery rates.
Five Years of Operational and Financial Gains
Lean production methods have contributed to major productivity improvements.
“After five years of applying lean we still have around 1,750 people working at
the Wai facility,” observes Rajendra Shivaraikar, Garware’s General Manager
of Manufacturing Excellence. “If we’d done nothing, with our sales growth we’d
probably require around 2,500 people in the plant, which would have made
the whole operation totally unviable.”
“As we have improved labor productivity we have moved people from one area
to another without resistance,” he adds. “They are willing to go to new areas,
acquire new skills and go there and work.”
From 2006 to 2010, GWRL realized the following improvements as a result of
its sustained commitment to lean manufacturing:
Results
• Sales grew from nearly $59 million in
fiscal 2006 to over $100 million in fiscal
2010—without incurring additional costs.
• TBM’s initial assessment of the GWRL
operations identified cost savings of $1.2
million per year; since the initial kaizen
event, the company achieved annual
savings of over $5 million.
• Other key metric improvements included
increased productivity, shortened lead
times, higher returns on capital employed,
significant energy savings, and better
handling of customer complaints.
• Lead times reduced from
54 to 25 days
• Manufacturing delivery on-time
in-full rate (OTIF) increased
from 26% to 83%
• Average OEE of Netting
machines increased 81%,
more than doubling machine
utilization
• Productivity, measured as kg/
employee, increased 26% in
netting and 38% in processing
• Return on capital employed
(ROCE) rose from 8% to a
projected 12% for 2011.
Metric
% Change
Lead Time –54%
On-time delivery in-full +219%
Overall Equipment Effectiveness as
measured in uptime improvements
Extrusion +29%
Netting +81%
Kg/Employee
Netting +26%
Processing +38%
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Mastering the Lean Ropes Case Study
Today, OEE ranges from 55 percent to 75 percent in netting operations, where equipment utilization has doubled in many cases.
As sales have increased, OEE improvements have made it possible for Garware to fulfill orders without investing in new equipment
that would have been necessary without such gains. Though it’s difficult to quantify the exact savings, Shivaraikar believes that not
having to make major capital expenditures has been Garware’s greatest financial benefit from applying lean concepts to the business.
Faster machine
changeovers
Improved OEE
and enabled
smaller batch
runs
Shorter Orderto-Shipment
Lead Times
In an effort to improve OEE
performance and reduce lead
times, GWRL successfully
implemented TPM and a variety
of other lean tools and methods:
• 5S visual controls
• Pull systems (kanban, supermarkets)
“We would have had to add at least three extrusion lines and ten netting machines
to cope with the increased volumes at the lower OEE performance,” Shivaraikar
notes. “In total we avoided a capital investment of almost $1.8 million.”
Some of the daily management tools the company implemented are:
• Pull-based material supermarkets and kanban systems – Over the
past five years the company has implemented kanban systems and supermarkets
to pull work-in-process through production and raw materials from suppliers. The
supermarkets established acceptable inventory levels for finished goods and
intermediate products.
• SQDC boards
• Flow to takt time
(workcells, water spiders)
• Quality gates
• 8D problem solving
• Visual standard operating
procedures
• Set-up reduction
• 5S — The 5S program was rejuvenated and ensures the right tools and materials are available to operators when and where they are needed.
• MDI and SQDC boards — During the initial implementation, lean manufacturing programs can turn the world upside down for
middle managers and supervisors. GWRL introduced a Managing for Daily Improvement (MDI) week for all supervisors that helps
explain how to manage lean operations. For example, team leaders review the previous day’s performance on SQDC boards (SQDC
stands for safety, quality, delivery and cost) at the beginning of each shift.
Garware Embraced the Policy Deployment Process to Align Resources
and Ensure Achievement of Breakthrough Objectives.
GWRL’s lean management process started with policy deployment, an executive planning process that identified six to seven critical
projects and allocates the appropriate resources to those projects. Those priorities guide kaizen event planning and scheduling. Today
most kaizen projects at Garware-Wall Ropes focus on improving both customer service (on-time delivery, product availability, etc.) and
product quality.
“We always said that we were customer focused, but the typical silos in the organization prevented marketing, manufacturing, production
and quality from talking to one another,” says Rajendra Shivaraikar, Garware’s General Manager of Manufacturing Excellence. “We
have really become customer focused today. Those department barriers have been more or less dissolved as people have come together
with common objectives, worked through the kaizen process, and seen the results at the end of a week.”
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04/2008
TBM Consulting Group, Inc.
4400 Ben Franklin Blvd.
Durham, NC 27704
800.438.5535
www.tbmcg.com