Many companies try to reduce changeover time utilizing teams
of employees. Much of our work involves training and working with these teams to
make changeover time reduction a reality. The problem is teams typically take a
long time to get substantial improvements and they don't sustain the effort long
enough to achieve 90% reductions in changeover time. Usually the changeover time
reduction effort simply fades away with little more than 50% reductions in
changeover on some machines. Most companies need rapid changeovers which equates
to more than a 90% reduction in changeover time on many machines. Because of
this, we knew there was a need for a different approach to reducing changeover
time.
We have developed the FasTrack 8 step method. We analyze
your current changeover, provide the recommended improvements, get buy in from
employees and fully implement the improvement. You, the customer, are in control
every step of the way. You are provided complete documentation of
recommendations and results to expect and must approve before implementation. If
you choose, Claunch & Associates, Inc. can make the recommendations and you
can have your employees implement.
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We conduct an assessment to determine the minimum
amount of improvement that is possible in your changeover
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We document your current changeover
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We analyze your current changeover and develop our
recommended improvements.
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We review our recommended improvements, including
costs to implement, with management.
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We review our recommended improvements with your shop
experts. (i.e. supervision, changeover experts, operators, and engineers.)
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Once you give the go ahead, we implement the
improvements and verify the results.
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We determine the most productive sequence of
changeover steps and document the new changeover procedure.
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We train all applicable employees in the new
changeover procedure.
Typically these 8 steps break down into three phases.
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We come to your facility to conduct an
assessment to determine the minimum amount of improvement that is possible
in your changeovers. First we examine your current changeover
documentation, historical data, interview your changeover experts. Then we
video tape a normal changeover completed by your best changeover expert
including start up. Finally, we meet with management to present our initial
determination of the amount of improvement we believe is possible.
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We document your current changeover.
Utilizing the video tape we took, we now identify the elements of your
current changeover, and load it into our changeover time reduction software.
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We analyze your current changeover and document
our recommended improvements. Every element of your current
changeover and startup is examined to determine what low cost improvements
can be made, including a bill of materials to be purchased and the specific
amount of time that can be reduced.
Phase 1 Objective: Identify current
changeover elements and recommended improvements.
Phase 1 Deliverables:
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We review our recommended improvements,
including costs to implement, with management. Typically the
review with management is involved more with the resulting reduction in
changeover time and the cost to implement. Once you give the go ahead, we
then conduct a review with the changeover experts.
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We review our recommended improvements with your
shop experts. (i.e. supervision, changeover experts, operators, engineers
and management.) This review session is very detailed and is
supported with our changeover documentation, implementation planner, video
tape, pictures of improvement and catalogs of purchased items.
Phase 2 Objective: Review sessions wherein each
recommendation is presented for buy in and improvement as necessary.
Phase 2 Deliverables:
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Meeting with management and supervision.
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Meeting with operators and mechanics.
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Final implementation planner including all
improvements, costs and time reduced.
Our guarantee: "If Claunch & Associates,
Inc. can not identify improvements that result in at least a 50% reduction in
changeover time, based on the changeover they document at your facility, you
pay nothing for their services, no matter how much time or costs they have
incurred on your behalf."
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Once you give the go ahead, we implement the
improvements and verify the results. We order all necessary
materials, fabricate and implement all the improvements approved in step 5.
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We determine the most productive sequence of
changeover steps and document the new changeover procedure.
Once all improvements are implemented, we work on the sequence of the
remaining changeover steps and develop a changeover manual for your plant.
We determine what the most efficient sequence is and layout the manual in
that order, including pictures and descriptions of each step, and a
checklist of the changeover steps.
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We train all applicable employees in the new
changeover procedure. Every employee who would do a changeover
is trained by Claunch & Associates in the improved method. Both the
trainer and the employee must sign off that they are capable of doing a
changeover on their own.
Phase 3 Objective: Provide a turnkey
implementation.
Phase 3 Deliverables:
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Complete implementation on machine changeover
improvement.
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Changeover procedure manual.
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Training of employees doing changeovers.
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Changeover checklist
SPECIAL BONUS: Baseline Settings Manual
We at Claunch & Associates, Inc. have found that often
after we leave, adjustments are sometimes made by employees that reverse the
improvements. Because of this, we will include a baseline settings manual for
each machine we implement the changeover time reduction. This manual will
provide all the settings that we determine are critical to a reliable startup.
In the event of a poor start up, your employees can go back to this manual and
determine what settings have been changed and reset those to the proper setting.
Ensuring that all employees that may adjust settings utilizing the information
in this manual will ensure you always have Rapid changeovers and Reliable
startups.
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