Over the course of the next three weeks my team worked together to design and then set up the POD. The obstacles they encountered would have shut me down in my tracks on the first day. But because I had Design, Toolmaking and Maintenance driving the project, not to mention the Union fully represented, every glitch was somehow quickly addressed.
While the work was going on there was a great deal of interest and skepticism on the part of the other employees. For starters we moved a vertical milling machine, two drills and two horizontal mills an average of 200 feet from their original locations. Keep in mind these machines had not been moved since being installed before anyone in the shop had been born.
I received many comments as I watched the work progress. Most of it boiled down to this: “you can put the mills and drills on the roof in you want. But it takes an hour to mill and an hour to drill a block.” But armed with my new found faith in LEAN methodology and the promise of “70% or better improvements in productivity” I pressed on.
As we were nearing the completion of the POD I noted that we were coming in nicely under our non-existent budget. The maintenance man even went so far as to pull conduit from unused equipment in other locations to safely make all the electrical connections. It was with great reluctance that they informed me that one of the machines required a special high-voltage breaker that would cost us $250. I happily signed the one and only Purchase Req for the project.
No comments:
Post a Comment