Productivity

In manufacturing, productivity increases can be seen clearly when production of products doubles and triples after making improvements in manufacturing processes.

My work at Schwan Foods in the 1970s included automating the pizza plant. We designed, built and installed machines to apply sauce, meat and cheese. Our revenue grew from $150 million per year in 1975 to $650 million per year by 1978 in the same facility with the same 1400 employees. Those employees who had been applying sauce, meat and cheese by hand were trained to become machine operators and promoted to these jobs. Others formed the material handling teams to ensure a continuous flow of sauce, meat and cheese to the automated line.  Others formed teams to inspect and fix pizzas after ingredients were added.

My work at Firearms Training Systems in 2001 included the purchase of a “coordinate measuring system” that performed 3-D, close tolerance laser measurement of machined parts.  This ended the manual inspection bottleneck that increased productivity in simulator weapons assembly. Assemblers now had perfect parts to rebuild simulator weapons with electronic components embedded. The system imported CAD designs and measured machined parts.

Advances in design tools have allowed us to create design drawings electronically on computers with CAD software. These drawing are downloaded to milling machines to allow computer integrated manufacturing. This allows welding robots to ensure perfect alignment and welds in auto frame assembly. This allows Dentists to use CIM to make crowns from pictures. This allows Bills of Material to be included on CAD files to ensure perfect inventory records and just-in-time reordering and delivery.  We solved the quality problems we had in the 1970 by 1990 using advances in design.

High speed manufacturing of high volume products uses fully automated production processes.  Disposable Diapers are made in these plants and one plant can supply customers in half of the US. These plants are typically staffed with 750 technicians rather than 3000 assemblers. The techniques used to make these advances are referred to as “Lean Manufacturing” and employs continuous process improvement. 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader