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Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Published : 08 Feb 2006 19:27 Keith Regan

Vapor Bus International, a maker of passenger door systems for transit buses and other transportation-related products, has changed dramatically in recent years as lean initiatives have pushed down production time and helped eliminate end-of-the-month rushes to meet deadlines. Keith Regan finds out how they did it.

As recently as a few years ago, the 300,000-square-foot production facility at Vapor Bus International in Niles, IL, looked like many other shops of its type: the plant floor was dominated by “mountains” of work in progress, with high labor costs and a focus on traditional batch-production methods. Often, there would be last-minute rushes to meet monthly deadlines, with welding, CNC, and lathe operators pulling all-nighters to finish partially assembled product.

“I was talking to a guy the other day who was reminiscing about how one day he stayed from 6 a.m. one day to 6 a.m. the next day to finish up an order,” says Director of Manufacturing Operations Ross Buchele. Around the same time, the company’s production facility had six active stock rooms, and some 12 different schedulers in charge of starting order production, according to R.J. Currer, the firm’s QPS (Quality and Performance Systems) manager. “You needed a crystal ball to give an update on the delivery process,” he says.
In 1996, Vapor Bus, which marked its 100th anniversary in 2003, was purchased by Wilmerding, PA-based Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp. (Wabtec), which operates some 40 manufacturing facilities around the world. With support from Wabtec, and Jeff Langer, corporate QPS director, things began to change. Vapor Bus began to explore lean and soon realized it had the power to dramatically alter the way it did business.

With extensive 5S, and lean manufacturing training providing what Currer calls “the essential building blocks for lean,” the company set out down the track of continuous improvement and before long had a serious head of steam. An MRP system was eliminated in favor of kanbans, and more recently extensive tie-ins with key suppliers have dramatically cut inventory in favor of just-in-time deliveries. Manufacturing cells were set up that helped reduce the amount of backed-up batch work cluttering the plant floor. In fact, the company relocated to a 100,000-square-foot facility in Buffalo Grove, IL, and went from having six stock rooms full of various parts and supplies to having no active stock rooms at all, and reduced schedulers from 12 to 1 scheduler/material handler.

Today, the cells are part of a production facility that is divided along product lines, with door panels and hardware produced in one area, pneumatic and electrical door actuators are made in another part of the facility and a third is set aside for relays and contactors produced for the railroad industry. In addition to streamlining part fabrication and assembly to take out the batch processes that led to build-ups of half-finished work, setup times have improved dramatically in many areas. The time it takes to get one brake press ready to handle an order has dropped from a high of some 80 minutes and a 2002 rate of 40 minutes to as few as two minutes and in some cases even less.

Throughput in this same area decreased from four to five days to two hours. Other gains have been equally impressive. Inventory dollars were reduced from more than $3 million to $2 million and on-time delivery climbing to 97 percent for assemblies going to original equipment manufacturers and 93 percent for aftermarket parts. “That’s still nowhere near where we want to be, but it’s a huge step from where we traditionally had been,” says Buchele. For a long time, production wasn’t even tracked closely enough to keep accurate records of on-time performance.

Today, production shipments are tracked daily, with the 97 percent rate comparing to rates in the 80 percent or even 70 percent range at one point. “It’s been a struggle at times, but we’ve seen the value and continued to push ahead,” says Currier. “It didn’t happen overnight. There’s continuous retraining, focusing, trying to just control processes and eliminate abnormalities in the process you’re trying to implement.” Vapor Bus trotted out a number of lean training techniques, from Lego-building exercises to frequent kaizen and value stream mapping events. In fact, during 2005, the firm averaged more than four kaizen events per month, conducting some 54 during the course of the year.

To ease communication, there is a heavy emphasis on visual controls, with color-coded charts posted at every manufacturing cell with information on parts per person per hour being used and other measures. “The idea is that within 20 to 30 seconds after someone walks up to that cell, they’ll have a sense of how it’s performing.” Cathy Campise, a senior buyer for the company, says Vapor Bus has been able to extend what it’s learned from lean beyond the walls of its facility. The company selected key items from its supply menu and focused on getting buy in from suppliers on ways to better provide parts when needed.

Today, the company has identified some 400 items that fit into a supply model that calls for suppliers to keep enough stock on hand so that they can release product for shipment within a day, fast enough to have material on site within three days from just about anywhere. “It’s been a win-win for us and the suppliers,” she says. Going forward, Vapor Bus is working on tying specific improvement goals to longer-term strategic initiatives over three to five year time frames.

The company will look at various key performance indicators (KPIs), such as internal PPM rates to see what kind of trends can be spotted and translated into quality improvements. By the end of January, Vapor Bus already had kaizens and other events scheduled through the summer, but Buchele says they’ve been careful to preserve room for unexpected opportunities to arise.

“Things always change in a manufacturing environment,” he says. “If demand spikes in an area or something else comes up, we need to be flexible enough to go back in and look at that area.” 31 Jan 2006 19:27 / KR