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- Thread starter Richard King
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- Oct 29, 2012
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I can see how it would be easy to debate, as it's hard to quantify even after applying it. This is apparent (to me) in how easy it is to spin a bad outcome into looking like a shining success. There's always that shotgun card in the back pocket if things go south; you know, that card that politicians always play, "Well, just imagine how bad things would be right now if we hadn't applied these principles." Almost a religious debate.
A lot of our problem with out company is that we are not a mass production plant like an automotive plant. In the automotive plant you basically have the same thing going on day in and day out. Your job may consist of doing on operation on that car.
Our plant is a specialty plant. We may run 15 parts for one order, tear that job down and run 5 parts for another order, tear that down, run 10 parts of this order, then tear that down and run another 10 of the order that is the same as the 15 you ran 2 hours ago. Scheduling leave a lot to be desired in our plant. But they insist that the orders have to be scheduled that way. I think it would be more cost effective to look at least one week ahead. If you have 7 orders of one part spread out over 5 days, run it all in one setup, instead of seven different setups. But we have been told that this is what Six Sigma teaches us. Lean manufacturing does work in certain cases, but the problem with anything like that is that you have one guy teaching it to 30 people. 20 out of the 30 all may have a different interpretation as to what they were told. Our company recently got into a bind by tossing away something like 400 different dies. The boss was told that the dies should be stored somewhere because a job will come up where they are needed. Instead of going to the die department and speaking with the operators that knows the dies inside and out, this boss is the arrogant type and he's going to research the usage himself. So people were called in on a Sat. and Sun. to tag the rusty dies. The next week, all went into the dumpster and hauled off to the scrap metal place. 2 days later the girl that delivers the dies has a list that need to be pulled to run a couple of different jobs. You guessed it. The ones on the list went to the scrappers.
So Lean training, Six Sigma, and such may work fine at some places, or it may be fine at all places, but to make it work correctly, EVERYONE needs to be on board with it and all need to understand it the same way. When we went through 5S training, the operators knew from the starting gate there would be trouble. The bosses all take their training first, then the employees. Then the bosses tell the employees later that this needs to be done and that needs to be done. 5S to precedence over manufacturing. I think at one time when it first started, we spent one complete week in our department implementing 5S and that was for 4 people. So there is 160 hours of non production work. And what I found really ridiculous about it was the we had to have every single thing taped off and labeled. Square tape marks all over the floor for your chair, trashcan, around your desk, square tape marks on your desk, for your stapler, for a manual, around the telephone, and everything had to have a label showing where it went. Why in the hell do you have to have a label on a broom that says "BROOM". Everyone in that shop is smart enough to know what a broom is, so why label it? Behind our lathe and mills, on the power boxes, they had to have orange squares on the floor underneath the powerbox designating that there was a power box above the square. This is how our shop implemented 5S :nuts:
Our plant is a specialty plant. We may run 15 parts for one order, tear that job down and run 5 parts for another order, tear that down, run 10 parts of this order, then tear that down and run another 10 of the order that is the same as the 15 you ran 2 hours ago. Scheduling leave a lot to be desired in our plant. But they insist that the orders have to be scheduled that way. I think it would be more cost effective to look at least one week ahead. If you have 7 orders of one part spread out over 5 days, run it all in one setup, instead of seven different setups. But we have been told that this is what Six Sigma teaches us. Lean manufacturing does work in certain cases, but the problem with anything like that is that you have one guy teaching it to 30 people. 20 out of the 30 all may have a different interpretation as to what they were told. Our company recently got into a bind by tossing away something like 400 different dies. The boss was told that the dies should be stored somewhere because a job will come up where they are needed. Instead of going to the die department and speaking with the operators that knows the dies inside and out, this boss is the arrogant type and he's going to research the usage himself. So people were called in on a Sat. and Sun. to tag the rusty dies. The next week, all went into the dumpster and hauled off to the scrap metal place. 2 days later the girl that delivers the dies has a list that need to be pulled to run a couple of different jobs. You guessed it. The ones on the list went to the scrappers.
So Lean training, Six Sigma, and such may work fine at some places, or it may be fine at all places, but to make it work correctly, EVERYONE needs to be on board with it and all need to understand it the same way. When we went through 5S training, the operators knew from the starting gate there would be trouble. The bosses all take their training first, then the employees. Then the bosses tell the employees later that this needs to be done and that needs to be done. 5S to precedence over manufacturing. I think at one time when it first started, we spent one complete week in our department implementing 5S and that was for 4 people. So there is 160 hours of non production work. And what I found really ridiculous about it was the we had to have every single thing taped off and labeled. Square tape marks all over the floor for your chair, trashcan, around your desk, square tape marks on your desk, for your stapler, for a manual, around the telephone, and everything had to have a label showing where it went. Why in the hell do you have to have a label on a broom that says "BROOM". Everyone in that shop is smart enough to know what a broom is, so why label it? Behind our lathe and mills, on the power boxes, they had to have orange squares on the floor underneath the powerbox designating that there was a power box above the square. This is how our shop implemented 5S :nuts:
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- Jul 1, 2012
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I just saw a crazy rule they have about "lock-out" I was working on a Do-All surface grinder last week and I asked the maintenance man helper to lock out the power after the foreman told me pulling the breaker was not good enough. Well yesterday I went looking for the key for the lock. I assumed there would be a cabinet for keys located where all the lock-out forms, tags, locks were in the maintenance crib. A central location for all the keys...I looked and nothing....I saw the foreman and said I wonder where the key is for the machine I'm finishing up is?
He looked at me and said "The man who puts the lock on has to keep the key on his person 24/7 until he unlocks the breaker." I was shocked and said "are you serious?" He said, "it was the rules"....so I went looking for the maintenance man who had helped me. He is around 60 and told me the stupid child like rules he has to follow makes him sick. Some liberal BS that some educated idiot dreamed up.
The MM said he was violating the rules as he had the key in his tool box and didn't take it home or wear it around his neck on a chain. He went and got it and said he was again violating the rules by letting me have it, but said "F the rules".....The stupidest thing I ever saw... I did see one other thing that was almost as bad....where you clean your safety glasses in the break room......The procedure on the wall said: Remove your safety glasses, put on safety glasses provided and squirt your glasses with cleaner, wipe, remove safety glasses provided and place in rack, put your clean safety glasses back on..... Talk about a Nanny State...My god...
He looked at me and said "The man who puts the lock on has to keep the key on his person 24/7 until he unlocks the breaker." I was shocked and said "are you serious?" He said, "it was the rules"....so I went looking for the maintenance man who had helped me. He is around 60 and told me the stupid child like rules he has to follow makes him sick. Some liberal BS that some educated idiot dreamed up.
The MM said he was violating the rules as he had the key in his tool box and didn't take it home or wear it around his neck on a chain. He went and got it and said he was again violating the rules by letting me have it, but said "F the rules".....The stupidest thing I ever saw... I did see one other thing that was almost as bad....where you clean your safety glasses in the break room......The procedure on the wall said: Remove your safety glasses, put on safety glasses provided and squirt your glasses with cleaner, wipe, remove safety glasses provided and place in rack, put your clean safety glasses back on..... Talk about a Nanny State...My god...
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- Oct 29, 2012
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This is not unique to 5S/Lean, and IMO it's the hallmark of an ineffective communicator somewhere along the line, probably at the helm of the meeting. I've come out of meetings in the Navy and in various places I've worked and been amazed at how different people walked away with different understandings of the materials presented. My last employer had a pretty effective method for dealing with this; they would have online quizzes once or twice per week. Management reviewed the quizzes, which questions people were getting wrong, and got another chance at the next meeting to drive the point home.
Yeah that sounds about right. I worked in maintenance and had a small cart that I pushed around with my tool bags/tool boxes of most frequently used tools on it. It was nimble, and could fit easily through doors and between machines to get back into the nooks and crannies where I needed to work. I also had a 800lb rolling toolbox that had all my heavy mechanical tools in it, which I only used for major breakdown/rebuilds, as it was a royal pain to drag/push it all around the plant. When 5S started making its rounds through the plant, it eventually made it to Maintenance. I had seen what silly things they enforced on Production, and could only imagine what would be in store for Maintenance. They made me throw away my nifty little cart and told me that I needed to consolidate all my tools into the big rolling chest and line each drawer with 1" thick foam. I was to make a cutout in the foam for each tool. That sounds like it would look real nice, but the problem is that when I consolidated all my tools, they barely all fit into the rolling chest stacked on top of eachother. I asked whether I should forego the foam or order 3 more rolling chests to fit all my tools in this space-inefficient organization scheme. I was told to get rid of whatever tools I didn't use often. HA! Ok. I have specialty tools which are only used once in a blue moon, but when they are needed, they are needed, and they are expensive. So I got rid of a few thousand dollars in tools. After that, every time I turned around I was in a scenario where I needed a certain tool but didn't have it, and had to improvise. I used pipe wrenches on things that required a spanner. I invented all sorts of ways to get snap rings off, in the absence of a proper set of snap ring pliers. I had to get rid of my oscilloscope and make due with a multimeter, so true troubleshooting gave way to blanket replacing of probably-good expensive electronic parts. I also stopped bringing my tools to the scene of the failure each time, because I didn't want to throw out my back dragging the now >1000lb toolbox everywhere, so I would show up with whatever tools I had on my person. Once I had surveyed the problem, unless I perceived that I would need more than a handful of tools, I would leave my "portable" toolbox sitting right there on it's painted yellow square. Production had to wait sometimes for me to make an extra trip back across the plant to it if I needed something else. I can see how this type of organization scheme could have benefited someone in Production, who uses the same tools day in and day out, who's work station is really a station, and who doesnt really have to come up with solution to problems, but for Maintenance, I felt like we should have been an exception. I sure everybody in Production felt that they should have been an exception as well, so it had to be blanket enforcement I guess. Oh well, I don't work there anymore.
Same as our shop. Everyone in the shop had to take Lock Out / Tag Out training even though we were not allowed to lock out our own machinery. They were trying to make it so that if you changed the blade on the bandsaw, you were going to have to lock it out before changing it and keep a log of when it was locked out. Reason being, while you were changing the blade, someone might walk by and turn it on. WTH? A;so. everyone in the Punch Press department had to LO/TO their presses when changing the dies. So if a press was locked out at quitting time, and that operator didn't show up the next day, his press didn't run because he was the only one who had a key and lock. The company wrote up a few people in the press department for not locking out their machine when changine dies, even though the machine had to be running to be able to set the die and set the ram at bottom dead center. The upper people didn't know how to set a press, but would still write a person up because in their eyes, the machine was supposed to be locked out until AFTER the die was setup. I swear they are trying to make the place childproof. It got so bad for a while, that if you got caught with bandaids in your toolbox, you got your ass chewed. They sent memos out to everyone that no one is supposed to have bandaids or Neosporin. For a while we used the soap that is Orange something or other and with me working on dies doing die repair, I washed my hands numerous times per day. Eventually the skinn around my thumbnails might crack or around my fingernails might crack, then of course you always hook that piece on your pants pocket. So one day I had to go see the girl that worked in Health, Safety, and Enviromental to ask for a bandaid. I had to fill out a form to get one. I asked for two because with only one and washing your hands all day long it would eventually come off. No way could I get two. If I needed another one later I had to go back over and get one. I told a guy that I was training that if he cut himself at work, to just wrap his hand up and take the afternoon off. Well, he ended up jabbing his hand with an X-Acto knife. Now we are required to wear Kevlar gloves. He jabbed himself which Kevlar won't stop, it only stops a slice. Even though he had them on and jabbed himself, he was accused of not wearing them and got wrote up. You get wrote up, it's on your record for 12 months. # write ups and you are in the unemployment line. He ended up cutting his hand on a sharp piece of aluminum. He took the afternoon off. He had to explain to them the next day why his hand was bandaged. He told them that he was changing the blade on his lawnmower and slipped while tightening it up. HS&E asked me if he cut his hand at work. I told them that not that I knew of, but I knew he was taking the afternoon off to mow the yard. It saved him from another write up. They did finally relax the rules a little bit about cutting ones self and although you still had to make out a report, you were no longer given a write up. BUT.....depending on what you cut yourself on, a team would be formed to answer the 5 "W's", Who, what, when, where, and why. Then the team would come up with some type of a resolution to the problem so it wouldn't happen again. Good in theory, but not in practicality. Depending on the machine and the accident, they might put guards on every machine, which at times created more of a problem than it solved. And this would be done by HS&E people that never ran a machine in their life or even knew what they were called. Even the guy that was hired in to give training on machine Guarding would call a Bridgeport Mill, a Grinder. I'm sure glad, I'm retired from there.
Last edited:
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Much though I dislike petty 'rules for the sake of rules', the lockout procedure is actually a good one.
There have been many instances of power being restored to machines that someone was working on, and many instances of people being maimed or killed because of it.
Having one person responsible for the lockout tag, and only one, ensures that power cannot inadvertantly be restored without authorization.
The maintainence personel can safely work on the machine in the knowledge that the tag won't be released until they personally request the keyholder to do so.
M
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LO/TO is brilliant, so I learned. I had a close brush with death after failing to adhere to the LO/TO policy. We had a machine that had a communications bus passing through a series of slip rings and were experiencing problems with it. At least once per shift, the machine would start having communications problems and we would have to shut it off, climb inside the machine in several different areas to access the sliprings and clean them. We also got in the habit of turning power off to the machine between shifts, as the problem seemed to be worse, the longer we left it sitting on but not running. Next to the low voltage slip rings were 680VDC sliprings. Due to the frequency of this operation, I became lax in my implementation of the LO/TO procedure. The operator would come get me and say "need to clean the sliprings again" and I would say "ok, I'm turning off the power, and I'll let you know when I'm done." One day on a weekend, I came in at an oddball time, as maintenance schedule did not jive with production schedule. The operator came and got me to clean the sliprings and I informed him that I was turning the machine off and getting inside. He said "ok" but failed to inform me that he was at the end of his shift, and failed to inform the the second shift operator that I was inside the machine. Second shift operator comes along not 30 seconds after I turned off the power and turns it back on. Meanwhile, I climb inside the machine and take the guard off the slipring assembly and start to clean the communications bus rings. I was in a wierd position and uncomfortable so I decided to brace myself against the slipring assembly. My left arm made ever so slight contact between the (+) and (-) of the 680VDC bus. A loud alien noise involuntarily came out of my mouth and I threw myself head-first into a big chunk of steel. I had some slight burns on my arm and goose egg on my head, but really I am one lucky SOB. He could have started that machine and turned me into hamburger. So I am a believer in the LO/TO procedure now, but not necessarily in the way they were describing - as in the guy taking the key home with him. IMO the way it should work is everybody has their own lock. Always use the multi-hole lockout clamp device that accepts multiple locks. Anybody who is working on the machine puts their lock on the clamp device while they are working, and takes it off when they are done. If there is work that spans multiple shifts, the oncoming guy puts his lock on before the offgoing guy takes his off. There should be a master lock that gets put on when the paperwork starts and gets taken off when it's cleared, and this key should be accessible by any and all persons who may present, qualified, and sufficiently informed of the job status to declare the job finished. This way the machine doesn't set idle when work is complete and nobody gets hurt.
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- Jul 1, 2012
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After reading that I guess I am wrong. In my situation I was a contractor working on a repair of a small tool room machine. When I was done I wanted to fire it up and test it and had to run down the maintenance man. I can see how important knowing the power is down in the bigger picture now.
One can learn something everyday of your life. Never to old to learn as they say......
One can learn something everyday of your life. Never to old to learn as they say......
I left my industrial job because of what everyone is talking about in this thread. brings back some memories!!!! I walked off the job b/c I was accused of violating a safety rule (which I will bring to my grave I wasnt) and some outsourced garbage middle manager, at the time he was accusing me, was ACTUALLY violation policy.
Do as I say not as I do, is how this place ran, and still runs. I left that line of work to never return, and instead I followed a child hood dream of mine.
Do as I say not as I do, is how this place ran, and still runs. I left that line of work to never return, and instead I followed a child hood dream of mine.