NORTH AMERICA explain why I remained optimistic about being able to fix things as a team . If we focused on three simple things , we would quickly return to profitability : ( 1 ) operational expense control , ( 2 ) improvements in productivity and efficiency , and ( 3 ) scrap reduction . As a real-time example I showed them that if all we did was eliminate our scrap ($ 3.6mm worth of castings were wasted ), we would return to profitability .” Before this message was conveyed , it seemed like the blame had been placed on poor contract pricing . But a new level of awareness and accountability spread throughout the enterprise as a whole , with spectacular results : in the first nine months scrap rates were cut by 50 % while nearly every other operating metric similarly improved .
As the team reflects on the journey of the first two years , it became clear that changes in operational management and employee engagement were the key factors in the transformation , however , technology played its part too . Within the first three months of ownership , they invested in and implemented QC-CALC , a software program that statistically tracks process capability in real time . The plant operates more than 25 coordinate measuring machines ( CMMs ) that make critical measurements on the components . This quickly gave better visibility into the areas where process improvement was needed . James Dickson said , “ We also invested in new machines to created dedicated flow lines . We found that certain machines did not have enough volume to be dedicated to a particular “ family ” of parts and we were doing too many change overs , which introduced unnecessary variation in our processes . By adding select extra machining
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