Situation: Silfex forecasted a major uptick in business for certain product lines, requiring them to develop more capacity quickly. They also needed to improve the prototype manufacturing speed for new product development with their Rapid Part Manufacturing Cell for their parent company, Lam Research Corp.
Projects: Silfex had many objectives to accomplish. First, TechSolve and Silfex evaluated inventory management and controls throughout all the value streams, and developed an action plan to drive down inventory and increase turns. Inventory levels dropped 20% and turns increased from 8.9 to 11.8 turns per year.
TechSolve helped Silfex develop a current and future state value stream map of their RPM process. An implementation plan was developed and aggressively pursued. Silfex improved from 51 to 100% on-time delivery to date.
Silfex and TechSolve gathered data using key operators; analyzed part numbers based on current production levels; looked for discrepancies and opportunities for improvement; and created a standard work layout for each machine to improve operator efficiency.
Silfex and TechSolve also used value stream mapping, capacity planning and quality improvement tools to eliminate bottlenecks, free up capacity, and improve quality. Lean tools including standard work, 5S and TPM were employed to sustain and improve upon gains. Silfex increased production from 40 to 95 parts per week for one product family and 10 to 30 parts per week for another.
In addition, TechSolve conducted a five-day Lean Facilitator class, with extra days devoted to Kaizen principles.
Results:
- Increased inventory turns from 8.9 to 11.8.
- Improved the Rapid Part Manufacturing cell delivery performance from 51% to 93%.
- Achieved over 97% on-time delivery performance for all product families combined.
- Increased capacity of two product families, enabling Silfex to retain $8,944,000 worth of business annually.