| Medical Equipment OEM |
| 11/07/2007 - Success Stories |
 Challenge - 1100% ramp up and project completion within 12 weeks.
Situation:
G & G's customer had a global product in the field with a part that was failing too often for a particular government agency's liking. The Agency mandated an "immediate, 100% replacement" on the internal assembly containing the substandard part, which had been made by an alternate process at another vendor.
Fortunately, G & G was familiar with the part, because we have been machining it to new design specifications for over a year.
The success of the product in the field and the need for "immediate and 100%" replacement meant that G & G would have to ramp up existing weekly production by over 11x (1100% ) to meet the customer's needs.
Solution:
- G & G ordered and installed two new machines, during the "crisis" phase before information was totally clear, to prepare for worst case scenario. Result: At least two weeks saved in lead time.
- G & G used set-based solutions development and total team involvement to design a new flow cell.
- Applying the Lean concept of Continuous Process Flow, the G & G team synched all aspects of the Value Stream - from the customer through the flow cell at G & G and to the plating vendor - in order to accelerate and stabilize the delivery schedule.
- G & G designed and implemented standard work processes, visual controls and team communication systems in record time to support the production and customer service teams.
- G & G's machine operators and first-line supervisors took the initiative to propose and implement a flexible, non-standard work schedule that would drastically cut lead times for the customer.
- That allowed G & G to forecast an 8-week production and 10-week total project lead time. The customer's request at project inception was 12-16 weeks.
Results:
G & G launched a completely new production process for the part in under two weeks with complete process stability. We achieved 90% of the production goal by end of week two, and were shipping to 100% of our promised delivery schedule by the end of week three.
This story has yet to finish, but G & G has proven capability that should allow us to finish the project exactly on our promised schedule - a full 2-to-6 weeks faster than requested.
Because of G & G's reliability, the parts are being kitted and shipped directly to the field, saving the customer the non value-added expense of redundant inspection.
The greatest result of all is that the end users of the product will experience minimal downtime, so our customer's brand equity has been protected and their service reputation has even gained credibility.
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