Enterprise Case Study (IE Industrial Engineering Reform & On-Site Zero-Waste Cost Reduction)

The workshop equipment layout was unreasonable, the beat difference between front and rear processes was large, and the production line balance rate was only 61.8%. The phenomenon of “front-end rush production, back-end idle waiting" occurred frequently, resulting in a large amount of invalid waiting waste for equipment and personnel, and the effective utilization rate of equipment was low.

Due to lack of standardized die change process and pre-preparation mechanism, the average single mold replacement time was as long as 1290 seconds. Frequent mold switching for multi-variety orders led to long-term frequent shutdowns, accounting for more than 28% of the total equipment downtime, seriously restricting production efficiency.

Employees had no unified operating action standards, with redundant actions such as repeated handling, long-distance picking and blind inspection. A single product had excessive manual working hours, low single-person output efficiency, and human error defects caused by irregular operations occurred from time to time.

Raw material racks, mold storage areas and finished product stacking areas were not planned in a standardized manner. The on-site logistics crossing and repeated handling were serious, the effective handling path was less than 60%, and the invalid handling time occupied a large amount of production working hours.

The production process relied on employee experience, without unified IE standardized process parameters and operation guidelines. The processing quality and production efficiency of different shifts and different operators were uneven, resulting in unstable yield and high hidden waste of rework and scrap.

Through IE beat analysis and process time measurement, sort out the bottleneck processes of each production line, adjust the equipment station layout and personnel allocation, balance the processing beat of front and rear processes, eliminate process congestion and idle waiting links, and maximize the continuous operation efficiency of the production line. Optimize the workshop spatial layout to realize proximity production of matching processes.

Split die change operations into internal die change and external preparation operations, transfer all preparatory work such as mold preheating, tool debugging and parameter presetting to equipment operating state completion, realize zero waiting for shutdown die change. Sort out standardized die change SOP, implement special die change personnel training, and completely compress die change downtime.

Adopt IE action time analysis method, shoot and decompose the whole process of employee operation, eliminate redundant actions such as repeated handling, blind viewing and unnecessary walking. Compile unified operation action standards and process parameter specifications for each station, realize standardized and streamlined operations, and reduce manual error defects.

Redefine the functional partitions of raw material area, mold storage area, processing area and finished product area, plan the shortest logistics handling path, eliminate cross-handling and repeated carrying. Implement fixed-point placement and quantitative management of on-site tools and materials, greatly improve logistics efficiency and reduce handling waste.

Establish a daily on-site waste inspection mechanism, classify and count waiting waste, handling waste, defective product waste and overproduction waste one by one, form improvement plans for each waste point, track the improvement effect in real time, and form a closed-loop management mechanism of discovery, rectification, verification and standardization.

Most enterprises blindly pursue equipment upgrading and market expansion, ignoring the huge invisible waste on the production site. IE lean management proves that standardized process optimization and waste elimination can bring far higher profit returns than traditional investment expansion, which is the core new profit growth point of the industry.

For customized stamping enterprises with frequent mold switching, die change downtime waste is the biggest efficiency bottleneck. Through separating internal and external operations and standardized process management, enterprises can achieve explosive improvement in conversion efficiency without modifying equipment, which is a universal efficient improvement method for the industry.

Getting rid of employee experience dependence and realizing data-based and standardized operation management is the fundamental way to stabilize production quality and efficiency. IE industrial engineering systematic sorting enables enterprise production processes to be inheritable, manageable and controllable, avoiding personnel capacity fluctuation risks.