Re-imagining a very large commercial workspace

I have taken a Maintenance position at a shelving, cabinet and tool box manufacturer. The company has had the same three Maintenance guys for between 15 and 40 years and are all about to retire over the next 16 months. As a company we build storage solutions for a lot of big companies but for reasons beyond my knowledge our in house system is, at best, poor.

My boss is very aware of our shortcomings and has allowed myself and our new electrician to create a plan to create a showcase of efficiency. 

Currently there is a lot of wasted space and a true lack of discipline in our current system. My idea was to take the next 12 months and turn the entire area around. Literally. Creating a parts crib, a oil storage area and a welding  workshop with the goal of efficiency in mind. 

If you were given essentially carte blanche to reset an area of about 15000sf what would you do? 

My current tasks are to remove approximately 100 tons of outdated or scrap components. Any scrap budget we incur from our area is promised to be returned to our area in assets like racking, shelving and components that we can use. 

Sadly pics are not yet available until the project is more set up and I am authorized to release them but to say that I it is a large project is an understatement. 

Is it just storage or is it a production line/lines also?  Seems like an exciting project.  There are many books and theories on how to organize production space. I've been through many and worked in several and the most effective seemed to be set up in "cells" and zones.  So each product line would have an area for production and it's suppplies would be stored nearby to minimize downtime to get parts.  Generally a larger separate warehouse would be used to feed these local cellular storerooms.  Additionally depending on dirt/noise some aspects of final assembly would take place near key pieces of equipment.  

Example a automated sheet metal bender would make cabinet parts for File cabinets.   It would make a drawer body, then a door face, then a shell in order.  The operator would do some amounts of finished fabrication on those parts right by the cell prior to sending it to paint.  Same thing would occur at injection molding stations for chair shells.  They would get riveted to frames right by the machine prior to moving to packaging as a finished good.  As parts where removed from paint plastic feet would get put in prior to movement to the next step.  The goal was to do what you could when the person had to touch the parts to remove them from machines rather then move the parts somewhere else just to touch them again and move them to yet another place.  This ment some actives would be distributed in the facility rather then having their own station but it reduced the total number of human touches. 

Things like automated parts bins with green/red lights and Lazer curtains are really neat if lots of individual stock parts need to go into production or shiping to ensure the individual parts are picked correctly for the order.  

This will be interesting to see how much they actually do and how much you can actually share.

This is just for the maintenance workshop and our inventory. 

I would be careful to not step on the 3 mechanics toes that have been there for a long time. They say they are going to retire but 1- they can change their minds 2- 16 months can feel like forever if they want it to. 
 

Not saying that you are going to do that but just a consideration. It sounds like a cool opportunity to do something big. 
The maintenance shop at work is ~8k sq ft. They built a room in the middle and that is split in half (mechanical / electrical)   The guys keep their toolboxes at their spaces there and then there is storage off to one side and fabrication areas to the other. Any mechanical work that is shop work gets brought into where their boxes are. If it's a broken machine they roll boxes out to the area. 

New York Nick said:

I would be careful to not step on the 3 mechanics toes that have been there for a long time. They say they are going to retire but 1- they can change their minds 2- 16 months can feel like forever if they want it to. 
 

Not saying that you are going to do that but just a consideration. It sounds like a cool opportunity to do something big. 
The maintenance shop at work is ~8k sq ft. They built a room in the middle and that is split in half (mechanical / electrical)   The guys keep their toolboxes at their spaces there and then there is storage off to one side and fabrication areas to the other. Any mechanical work that is shop work gets brought into where their boxes are. If it's a broken machine they roll boxes out to the area. 

Good points. Also;

Get their input before scrapping everything. If they're smiling while everything is being tossed, rest assured you will need something in there a month from now. You'll take the blame. 

Six Sigma won't help you then.

Lean / Six Sigma Master Black Belt here.

First, define what excellent looks like (productivity, quality, flexibility, safety, etc.).

Next, measure your current state (how long do various tasks take, how much rework and scrap do you have, etc.)

Now, create Pareto charts to identify what you do most often, what is the most time consuming, what is the most difficult, etc.

At this point, you're ready to model various options and be able to objectively compare them to determine what's best.

Get familiar with these tools / concepts:

Eight Sources of Waste, Definition of Value, Single Piece Flow, 6S, Spaghetti Diagrams, Point of Use, Kan Ban Systems, Pull Systems, Andon Systems, SMED, Standard Work, Time Motion Studies, Line Balancing, Poke Yoke.

Essentially, what you're doing is Industrial Engineering...the concepts are intuitive and the internet has tons of good resources.

Parting advice, simplicity is underrated, don't get too fancy.

Good luck,

Brett     

^What he said.

But also make sure you get management support, because without that, pretty much all of that stuff falls down.

Don't forget to use vertical space wherever you can reasonably do so. That can reduce your overall footprint and/or give you more storage in a given area

I should clarify a few things.

This is a large factory with nearly no automation. Many hand actuated stamp, bend and shear presses, hand loaded multi point rosette welders and four large powder paint systems. The factory is what it is. We improve as necessary but it's simply not necessary to reinvent the tool box unless a new machine is installed. 

I am specifically focused on the maintenance area of the factory. It's a VERY large area and currently there is no fear of loss of area in the near, mid or long term projections. Currently I see the area as "workshop", "oil center" and "clutter". It's a fair assessment. My goal is to standardize the inventory maintenance maintains (separate from production), create an uncluttered, organized workshop and reformat the oil storage system. This involves collecting, refurbishing and hopefully improving the multiple drawer and rack systems.

I have the blessing of all but one person,  he is on vacation until mid December and then retires in January.

It's easy to change a workspace. It's almost impossible to change a worker and the habits he had developed over 15-40 years. 
 

Owners love to think they can get people to work more efficiently. Rarely works. 
 

If you've got a guy who works like a slob and is used to dropping his tools everywhere, giving him well organized storage systems won't change him. 
 

Ooph. I'm doing something similar right now.  Also a six sigma black belt.

This ain't six sigma to be clear.

This is 5s.

Throw everything away that is questionable.  

Create some metrics of what you want to achieve.  Figure out how to achieve those metrics.  Go do it.

Eight now, I inherited a spreadsheet from 2015 with our inventory on it.  We use sap.  No spares are in sap.  Hahaha.

Shelves are labeled with the parts on them which is useless because you still need to look at every shelf to find what you want.

I plan to create a floor plan and a numbering system for every shelf and location.  Then, get every part in sap associated with what equipment it's used for.  This will be a long process....

If your talking about work spaces, figure out how to do those tasks and create areas for those tasks with the tools and resources necessary at those areas.

In other words, just follow RX Revens advice!

In reply to QuasiMofo (John Brown) :

Large isn't always good. It can promote disorganization. 
 

Why is the shop large?  What processes and procedures need to be accommodated?

This doesn't sound like an environment that is ready for what RexRevin is describing. 

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

This doesn't sound like an environment that is ready for what RexRevin is describing. 

You're probably right so taking human factors (what I studied in grad school) into consideration is critical to success.

As wvumtnbkr indicated, start with 5S (now known as 6S to include safety) as you can make a qualitative improvement to the work environment in one day.

This immediate cause and effect outcome "earns" you the right to introduce a slightly bigger investment such as a high level spaghetti diagramming session resulting in a basic layout change to improve workflow and/or visibility.

I never tell people what to do...I introduce a principle or tool conceptionally followed by a few examples and then facilitate a group discussion to gain consensus of what will be done.

Typically, 5 to 10 percent of participants are either checked out or even somewhat hostile but that leaves 90 to 95 percent to work with and the more you "earn" the right to lead changes, the more the 5 to 10 percent realize how silly they're looking.

I've been doing my job for 24 years and I stopped counting the number of improvements to my credit when I hit 12,500...you're right but when you support and promote rather than coerce and threaten, E36 M3 gets done.  

I realize this site has a very high percentage of readers who are engineers, and agree that most of those ideas and processes make good sense. 
 

To the rest of the world, "seiri, seiton, seisō, seiketsu, and shtsuke" is just Greek. Or maybe Japanese. 

In reply to RX Reven' :

Never said anything about coercing and threatening. It doesn't work. 
 

But 5s, 6s, Six Sigma, and all their related tools and concepts do not have a lock on positive management techniques, and failure to use them specifically by name most certainly does not equate to coercing and threatening. 

Draw the layout to scale.   Make "Paper dolls"  to scale of any equipment and storage racks you intend to install.   Do layouts. 

Take a picture of each iteration so you can go back and see your previous thought.   

I've laid out offshore oil producing facilities this way in the days before 3-modeling.  And its faster than Autocad because you can do the rearranging yourself on the fly instead of relying upon a Cad operator.

The 40 year vet is on vacation until January 1. We are a union shop and there are no feet in the building on Thanksgiving weekend and the Christmas holiday so the idea is to 6S small sections and prep for bigger better things. 

This was job 1:

Flat planes become landing spots for clutter. 

This office is now empty with nothing in it. A wall mounted tool station and battery charging system as well as drawers for our rigging equipment. Adding a wall mount bracket for the computer that is currently not used and adding CMMS is a requirement from the owner. 

In reply to SVreX (Forum Supporter) :

We build tool boxes and industrial racking systems. Our presses are in the 250-500 ton range. Big presses get big parts into our area.