Pall Corporation | Pensacola, Florida (2002)
Company Information:
The Pall Membrane Technology Center in Pensacola manufactures filters for medical, pharmaceutical, industrial and laboratory applications. Pall Corporation is the leader in the rapidly growing filtration, separations and purification industry. It provides leading-edge products for use in high-growth applications such as genomics, proteomics and biotechnology, in transfusion medicine, semiconductor, water, aerospace and a host of other industries. Pall’s business is organized around two broad markets: Life Sciences and Industrial, with annual sales of over $1.5 billion.
Situation:
The S-Pack line was staffed by up to eight employees and produced 135 boxes of filters per shift. The current system resulted in overproduction within the line causing inventory buildup and long lead times. Additionally, the team was not cross-trained and ergonomic issues were a concern. There was also extensive material handling, transportation and wasted motion.
Center Assistance:
ATN-UAH initially trained several management and supervisor personnel in the Lean Certificate Series. A kaizen event was scoped to include the design of a new S-Pack cell to address the problems above. A cross-functional team of 14 Pall employees and two ATN-UAH facilitators set the goal of increasing production to 200 boxes per shift with the same or less staffing requirements. The team also wanted ownership and pride in the new layout and better cross training.
Results:
In a four-day event, the kaizen team designed a new cell with point of use storage, implementation of kanbans to improve product flow, visual workplace with a production scoreboard and operator rotation to improve cross-training and ergonomic issues. Part travel distance was reduced 83%, operator steps were reduced 67%, lead time in the S-Pack line was reduced from five days to 1.3 days, material storage racks/containers were reduced 66% and the production rate increased to 200 boxes per shift.
Client Comments:
“It’s amazing how transparent Non-Value Added (NVA) activities are imbedded in the daily routines of the organization. Through the kaizen process, we were able to make major productivity improvements without the extensive costs normally associated with re-engineering of the value stream, by the simple process of identifying and eliminating the eight wastes of manufacturing. The kaizen methodology the UAH lean practitioners facilitated in our plant illustrated firsthand the classical 95/5 lead time rule with respect to the proportion of non-value added to value added activities occurring within our operations. I am still amazed at how easily and quickly we realized the benefits of having ATN conduct the kaizen event and applied lean principles to our operation.” – Bob Youngerman, Senior Industrial Engineer Pall Corporation.