Lean Six Sigma | Electronics

Lean Six Sigma

Millennia Technology’s Total Quality Management (TQM) initiative is spearheaded by Lean Six Sigma principles that drive every functional department with a continuous improvement mind-set. Operational excellence will differentiate Millennia Technology in six (6) focused areas: Quality Leadership, Customer Relationship Management, Manufacturing Excellence, Time-to-Market, Supply Chain Management, and Leadership.

Management believes that this focus on operational excellence is the foundation upon which Millennia Technology will become a recognized world-class, vertically integrated, electronic manufacturing services provider. With a continuous improvement mind-set, we embrace, and combine, Lean and Six Sigma to deliver breakthrough performance improvements that will allow us to deliver customer product quality, cost effective material sourcing, and world-class manufacturing processes. These cost driven initiatives, and our cost sharing mind set,  will enable our customers to be more cost competitive in their respective market place.

Lean Methodologies

Lean manufacturing principles, combined with Six Sigma initiatives, make a formidable weapon to provide continuous improvement in electronic manufacturing enterprise-wide processes as we strive to satisfy customers in an increasingly complicated global marketplace by targeting and eliminating “waste” in all its form, thus improving our operational and financial performance, and total customer satisfaction.

Lean methodologies were pioneered by Dr. William E. Deming (a world renown quality guru), and Dr. Shigeo Shingo, a manufacturing engineering expert, who was credited with developing the Toyota Production System (TPS). At Millennia Technology, we embrace the TPS and employ a wide range of lean initiatives to continuously reduce our operating cost.

In typical electronic manufacturing services companies, it is not unusual to find up to 90% of all shop floor activity to be wasteful, that is, activities that do not add value to the product. Such wasteful activities are extra movements, over-production (producing too much), waiting to be processed, extra inventory, even product testing (testing does not transform the product--its only product validation). Ideally, every production process should help transform (add value) to the product that your customer wants, and for which they are willing to pay. Everything else is wasteful, non value added.

The 5S Program

We have a very active 5S program where by all shop floor departments strive to demonstrate their full adherence to the 5S’s: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. The department that best embodies these principles is awarded the monthly “Golden Broom,” which is showcased within that department for an entire month, until another winner is announced during our monthly “All Hands Meeting.” Peer recognition motivates shop floor organization and cleanliness. A random drawing of all monthly winners is held, at the end of the year, to determine the annual winner, whose members receive monetary gift certificates.

SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Die)

SMED is the lean term, but to Millennia Technology this is “SMT Set-Up/Changeover.” By employing   "specialists”, off-line, we focus on each step of loading SMT reels onto feeders. Using a double-check, feeder sign-off that proper reels were used, helps error-proof the set-up. This sign-off process is used on the actual SMT line to build quality in to the process. Using a variety of special techniques, we have reduced our typical changeovers from 2-3 hours to less than 30 minutes in 2007. Our 2008 goal is to continue our focused efforts to reach 15-minute changeovers.

Visual Management

The theory of Visual Management is “what gets measured, and displayed, get done.” The practice is simple: display performance data and goals in high visibility locations. We update charts/graphs regularly to show achievement (or failures). World-class practitioners of visual management make wide use of charts, diagrams, and metrics displayed on “Visual Boards,” located throughout the shop floor and office areas. At Millennia Technology we practice the principle and display our performance throughout the company.

 

Cellular Manufacturing

Cell manufacturing is an approach in which equipment and workstations are arranged in a bounded area to facilitate small-lot, continuous-flow manufacturing. Cells are often established in a “U-shaped” configuration. All cell operations necessary to produce a component or subassembly are performed in close proximity. Operation-to-operation transfer times are typically near zero. When defects or other issues arise within the cell, the quick feedback between operators improves quality. Operators in a typical cell are generally cross-trained and are able to perform multiple tasks as needed.

Kanban

Kanban is a Japanese word for “card, or signal.” Scheduling, combined with traveling instructions conveyed by simple visual devices in the form of cards, balls, carts, containers, etc, can be applied to both material flow in the factory, information or project flow in the office, and material flow between suppliers and customers. At Millennia Technology, we have begun using kanbans to signal upstream that we have “sold one/moved one" kanban, and we need to replenish that kanban. Using kanban on the shop floor, employs the concept of “SOMO” where we “Sell one, Make one.”

Kaizen

Kaizen is a philosophy of continual improvement, emphasizing employee participation, in which every process is continuously evaluated and improved in terms of time, resources, quality, and other aspects relevant to the process.

Kaizen is often confused with Kaizen Events. They are not the same. Kaizen events are artificial groups setup to address a single subject/area. They are usually one-time events/affairs. Kaizen is intended to be incorporated as a normal day-to-day approach to the improvement of the entire value stream. A kaizen event usually is a one-week activity/event. It normally consists of 5-10 people, whose target is to improve a single event/process.

Value Stream Map

Value stream mapping is the process of identifying and charting the flow of information, processes, and physical goods (material) across the entire supply chain from the raw material supplier to the possession of the customer. Value stream mapping is a basic planning tool for identifying wastes, designing solutions, and communicating lean concepts.

Generally, we focus on the “Current State” and chart the current manufacturing processes that we are presently using, regardless of how efficient they may be. Then we focus on the “Future State” and chart the process flow as we would idealize it, or optimize it, eliminating wasteful motions/activities that do not add value to the product.

Other Lean Principles

The above represent the basic Lean Principles most often used to transform a manufacturing shop floor and/or supporting departments. Applying lean principles is a slow, methodical, never-ending process. We frequently refer to launching a lean program as a “journey that never ends.” Perhaps that is why we must embrace the mind set of continuous improvement, never being satisfied with our current state.

Other Lean Principles to consider are: Point of Use; Poka Yoke; JIT (just in time); Batch Size Reduction; One Piece Flow;  Takt Time; TPM (total productive maintenance);  and Work Balancing.

To  learn more about Lean contact Millennia Technology.

 

Six Sigma

In electronic manufacturing, Six Sigma is a level of quality equal to 3.4 defects per million opportunities. The term was made popular by Motorola in the mid-to-late 1980s. For the past 20 years, companies have launched a variety of quality improvement initiatives to eliminate process variation, and to build the “perfect process” that produces the “perfect product." In practice, it is much more difficult. Throughout the past two decades, as we seek improvement, and drive our processes to be capable of producing six sigma quality, the industry has come to appreciate how difficult that target is to reach. We must error-proof everything we do on the shop floor and in the support departments. The principle on continuous improvement is at the very foundation of this effort. Without this insatiable drive toward perfection, one will never produce six sigma quality. In every department, enterprise-wide, we can measure almost everything we do, and we should. In HR, we can measure our accident rate, our turnover rate, on and on. The six sigma math specifies six sigma as 3.4 defects per million opportunites, and that translates into 99.99966% good product (defect free)—near perfect. In practice that means that every time we place components with our automated SMT equipment, we can not have more and 3 defects (really 3.4) every time we place one million components on the surface of printed circuit boards. That is tough to do, but we strive to meet that target, and we seek to continuously improvement the process. At Millennia Technology, we embrace and target six sigma quality in every thing we do. We may not always be there, but that is our goal.