Implementation Strategy V4 - Unipart Logistics

Set Objectives
Two main objectives were:
• Increase capacity to meet customer demand
• Maintain a high level of quality to continue to exceed customer expectations.
Grasp the situation
At this stage we wanted to establish the current state of the operations, regardless of the history
or reasons.
Frame Examine
Shot Blast
Strip Area
Process Flow
Bolster Area
Paint
Comm
Cell
Internal
Assembly
Because the process has been broken down into a ‘flow process’ (or Single Piece Flow), our
bogie moves from one stage to the next in a sequence until it has been through all the stages and
is complete. This has a number of benefits, but one of the problems is often how to make this
whole process perform faster (increase our capacity). Think of the analogy of a group of walkers
going on a hike, and for safety reasons they are all joined together by a rope. The speed of the
group is set by the slowest person, and the same is the case for our process. If one of the stages
goes too fast it will run out of parts, and will also produce faster than the next stage requires.
Conversely, if a stage goes too slow, it will stop the next stage through lack of work and the
preceding stage will have finished work with nowhere for the work to go.
Process Mapping of
operations to include all
material and information
flows.
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