Visual work instructions for fast takt time manufacturing assembly

[fighterpilot]

I'm looking to see what others are doing w/r/t creating work instructions (visual, textual, or both) for a fast takt time manufacturing process.

In the area I support our takt times run anywhere from about 9 minutes to 12 minutes. More than likely we are running three or four workbenches and the mechanics are paging thru more than 10 pages of visual work instructions.

Issue we have comes in when we have to rebalance the production line to meet an increase or decrease in demand, which changes the takt time significantly. Seems our current way of creating visual work instructions is static, and does not expand or contract easily. These instructions are simply PowerPoint pages with digital pictures.

--
Fighter Pilot
Manufacturing Engineer

 

[KENAT]

At a previous employer for each work station/manufacturing process they actually had posters of the steps to be taken there - no turning of pages or clicking 'next' etc.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[tomwalz]

We use posters - digital pics of work in progress

Tested instructions

8.5" x 11" laminated

Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.

http://www.carbideprocessors.com

Good engineering starts with a Grainger Catalog.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Ten pages may be too many for a single workstation with a short takt time.
Can you break up the task set?



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[blucas1]

Hi Fighterpilot -

A couple of questions to put some boundary conditions on the problem. First, are you confined by budget and or other constraints from investigating a paperless solution? There are several database packages on the market that offer paperless deployment options which greatly simplify the issue of line rebalancing. The better interfaces present information in a graphical process tree format that allows you to drag and drop from one operation to another to rebalance the line. Second - when you say your operators are leafing through 10 or more pages of visual instructions, how many steps does this entail per workbench? 10? 20? The reason for this question is that even if you go paperless, you are talking about the same number of "mouse clicks" or other interactions to step through the instructions. Since you are military, I would assume that it is a requirement that the workers follow the instruction process during the build. Are you collecting signatures on a paper router as well? Again, this is an area where a paperless deployment with electronic signature capabilities might streamline both the manufacturing process and the line rebalancing issue. Lots of possible ways to skin this cat and make your life easier. Really depends on your constraints, ability to change and ultimately, the consequences of not changing coupled with the benefits of moving to a new system. Several solutions can be found by searching Google for "work instruction software."

Best,

Barry Lucas

http://www.sequencesoftware.com

 

[BillPSU]

I work at a facility which manufactures skid steer loaders about 40 units in 8 hours. The work instructions are necessary to learn the job but after that the assemblers must be able to remember the processes. We currently build a mix of machines due to Tier 4 emmission standard being implemented on unit destined for Europe and North America while the remainder of the world are using Tier 3 emmissions. Like blucas1 stated there are several work instructions databases avaialable. We are using one of them.

Bill