MBM: Lean transformation in the New Product Development area.
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Our client is an Italian company that has been operating in the production of metal fittings for the shipbuilding industry since 1989. The company offers a complete range of products (from wet unit, walls and ceilings, to doors) and tailor-made solutions based on specific customers’ needs.
The Challenge
The company over the years has gained a significant position in the market, thanks to remarkable technical and production standards and a high level of flexibility to market requirements. It has always been able to offer highly customized products and an excellent customer service. In recent years, however, things have worsened: the sudden growth of turnover has caused both more management complexity and a lower level of customer service (orders were constantly late and production costs higher due to an extensive use of subcontractors). As a result the overall profitability has been significantly affected.
The Action
The first goal of our project has been to analyze the current state and understand the problems and their causes. Problems were then classified according to four aspects:
Processes: • no value stream for each identifiable product family • long product development Lead Time • lot of waste: e. g. incomplete information, technique changes during the process • very little standardization of procedures, information and design specifications • no focus on target costs • large variety of components
People: • business climate to be improved • little flexibility • no focus on goals
Tools: • absence of KPI’s (time, cost, efficiency, quality) • ERP system not updated
Organization: • no clear rules and responsibilities • no decision making at lower levels • non process oriented functional organization
The second phase was focused on developing an improvement plan aimed at reducing the throughput time of product development, using Lean techniques. We spent a lot of time training people and designing a new organization chart based on three value streams ( wet unit, walls and ceilings and doors ). This radical change brought benefits in terms of: • better control and management of the development process • clearer roles and responsibilities • focus on objectives
For each of the three product flows, we created an interfunctional team (marketing, design, production, quality, purchasing, logistics) with the task of implementing the action plan. In order to explain the right method to develop a new product and show how it reduces both times and costs, we started a pilot project for ‘wet unit’ (the most complex for the company) using one of the best visual management technique developed by Toyota: Oobeya.
This technique enables a Lean behaviour: • definition of project goals, especially target cost and KPI’s; • Anticipation of problems through analysis of internal and external risks; • reduction of late technique changes; • definition of standards supporting the new development process of box-hygiene • elimination of complex tools and non value added operations • knowledge sharing and quick decision-making
The Results
Our project brought significant results especially through the use of Oobeya: new orders lead time and total process costs have been extensively reduced
Other significant results are the improvement of business climate inside the company, a better focus on objectives and a better process control.