Pall Corporation | Pensacola, Florida
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 has annual sales of over $1.5 billion.
Situation:
The JIT Cell consists of equipment and facilities to produce small order quantities of many types of filters. Traditionally, orders were batched and processed through the operations all at once. As a result, lead times were excessive, workflow was poor, workstations were unorganized and there was excess inventory and part/operator travel. Much time was spent searching for tools, supplies and inventory specific to an order that needed to be expedited.
Center Assistance:
ATN-UAH initially trained several management and supervisor personnel in the UAH Lean Certificate Series. A kaizen event was scoped to include the implementation of 5 S and point-of-use-storage (POUS) for materials and supplies. Furthermore, the equipment would be arranged so that orders can be processed one at a time with minimal travel and inventory. A cross-functional team of 17 Pall employees and two ATN-UAH facilitators set the goal of implementing 5 S and POUS as well as reducing lead time and a using the one person/one job method of processing orders.
Results:
In a four-day event, the kaizen team organized the work area by implementing 5 S, POUS and visual factory tools. The equipment was arranged in multiple cells to facilitate processing one job at a time from start to completion. A kanban system was also implemented to control sheeted inventory, as well as a first-in-first-out (FIFO) order processing system. The impact on the area included a 77% reduction in part travel, 60% reduction in square footage used by equipment and operations, 65% reduction in material handling equipment, 77% reduction in operator walking and projected 80% reduction in lead time through the JIT cell.
Client Comments:
“This was the second kaizen event facilitated by ATN at our plant and it turned out to be more successful than the first. The most amazing circumstance of this event was the enthusiasm of the production associates and their desire to participate in the next kaizen event. A pull effect for lean manufacturing was created in the organization with the demonstrated success of implementing lean tools and principles during the first kaizen event. I look forward to many more success stories and will continue to utilize the great resource of lean practitioners from ATN-UAH in implementing lean principles.” – Tom Murray, Manufacturing Operations Manager Pall Corporation