Episode 4. Is it Automation VS People, or Automation And People?

Please share ideas for a hashtag for folks following this podcast. We'd love to get a community going around this so we can all share these ideas.   

The idea behind this podcast is to let people follow along as we wrestle with the ideas of TPS, Lean manufacturing, and Continuous improvement.   We talk about how to think through automation. Is it truly automation vs. people? Probably not. So far, we've focused on keeping automation fairly inexpensive, but also we try to keep our automation very flexible even at the expense of speed. Flexibility seems to win every time. 

The Toyota Way is a great book

 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-toyota-way_jeffrey-k-liker/248851/item/3846812/?gclid=Cj0KCQiA8t2eBhDeARIsAAVEga1NtXj1opypqk1dldXkbghA4YpThZr2p5FjaqDyT3CU4H2FxNfEGPcaAklDEALw_wcB#idiq=3846812&edition=3503878 

How do we compete on a global scale and how do we find automation opportunities that are inexpensive, flexible and easy to implement. Automation does not need to be all robotic arms. We discuss some other place to implement automation that are cheep and very effective. Some software is a great place to start implementing automation. Unfortunately much of what we see on the internet are very fancy and complex movements but really where we should start is automating simple tasks and do so in a universal manner.  The shift in mindset that allows us to leverage the tool set of lean and TPS is to stop thinking about just the cutting of your parts as the process of production but rather thinking about all the steps end to end of finding work, engaging the customer, to making and shipping their product. This includes paperwork, email workflows, etc. Look for the 8 lean wastes in every step.  

We touch on Zero Quality Control and how to approach zero defects. Poka yoke fixtures and source inspection are foundational to achievement of zero quality defects. It is interesting to explore how we might apply that to some of the things we do in our shops. We also discuss some basics of SMED. Both concepts from Shigeo Shingo.  

 We go over how the vibratory tumbler is maybe delaying the process of getting new buckle components ready for paint. Devin questions how this issue can be solved without just throwing money at it. This is where production rationalization is critical. How do we make rational choices when looking at the complete production process. Do we spend money on upgrading the tumbler or are there cheaper ways of improving flow and speeding up end-to-end production time. Some interesting ideas come out of the discussion. Good food for thoughts. How do we reduce batch size and speed up the process as much as possible per dollar spend.  

We talk through mental load and its effects on work in the shop. How do we quantify the effects of this. The gains of getting things out of your head seem very substantial, but it’s hard to figure out what the extent of this is on our ability to work effectively. We’ll dig into this further, but many of the improvements we’ve made in the shop save time directly, but also deliver a huge reduction in mental load. This might be the missing piece that makes lean and continuous improvement a runaway success…TBD  

Devin goes over some improvements to his job management board and how they improve the availability and clarity of information at a glance.   Uriel shares some improvements from this week. Some fun with barcodes and general organization. Great video on QR codes and Barcodes from Fastcap! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftRVAjGIEwQ  

Don't waste your human potential folks!  Revenue is vanity and profits are sanity!  It can be hard to grow a business with only improvements. But by far the worst improvements are improvements that are incomplete. All the time and costs, with no benefits!