The POD - Part 6

Over the next few days the work progressed as did the method changes. The toolmaker in charge prided himself by coming up with change after change to make The POD better. One of the most significant was his idea not to mill all six sides of each block. Thinking he had come up with a way to “cheat” my new system he asked why it was necessary to machine all six sides if we didn’t have to.

Pointing out that I was not a toolmaker I asked him what he meant. He explained that in most cases the blocks were either going to be further machined in a later operations, or did not require machining because they would not be installed next to another block. Of course he only knew this because he had the designs in front of him. An apprentice working in isolation in the Machining department would have no way of figuring this out. So the Toolmaker came up with a method by which he used a simple magic marker and marked the sides of each block that required machining with an “X.” He then gave instructions to the operators not to waste time on the unmarked sides. And the Minutes/Block dropped further.

By Thursday morning the Toolmaker told me that he would be all finished by noon. While we had made big improvements over the “hour to mill and hour to drill” I was still wondering what I had missed. But trying to focus on the positive I thanked him for his help and asked if would be willing to tell the whole company at Shift Change how the trial had gone.

And that was when the next amazing thing happened.

All of a sudden the Toolmaker said “wait a minute. It usually takes five to six weeks to get all the blocks milled and drilled for a job. I’ve just managed to mill and drill all the blocks for two jobs in just three and a half days.”

And there it was. The dramatic improvement I had been looking for. At the Shift Change meeting the toolmaker went on and on explaining to the group all the wonderful things he had done in order to get all his blocks completed in less than a week. And how he was now “five weeks ahead of schedule” on his next two jobs.

This time there was no yelling. There were no cries about how it was impossible to improve out process. There was just toolmaker after toolmaker lining up to get their jobs scheduled through The POD as well.

And that’s how this 65 year old tool and die shop took its first hesitant steps on the journey of LEAN manufacturing.