Bringing the factory to site

 

80 Mod Project rough sketch Value Stream Map (VSM)

This VSM from my last post was developed to highlight how, with a 20 minute white board sketch, clear insights can used to direct a company's strategy. It helped highlight the issues with the factory focus of recent years where getting the factory output running has been the main focus without the same level of focus on the site install and completion of projects, ensuring keys are reaching the hands of their customers.
The take away from this quick VSM clearly showed the inventory levels in red at each step of the process, with a factory outputting 3 modules a day and delivering a project every 6 weeks. This requires 4/5 active sites running at any one time and up to 400 modules of unfinished inventory to consume that relatively low factory output. The historic approach from all the factories I've visited and worked in has been to try and increase factory output, often with targets to double output in this quarter or that. If successful with this example it was budgeted to cost somewhere in the region of £4 million and site was just left to the same methods and processes, meaning that we would have needed 8-10 building sites open at one time. So that's 8-10 site teams, scaffold installs, cranes, logistics support, QS, procurement, design support, on hire equipment, and worst of all risks, problems, weather, and delays.

When we use Goldratt's 3 metrics to see if a company is 'making money',

'Increase throughput while simultaneously decreasing inventory and operational expense'

It's clear that doubling the factory output isn't going to work and it's no surprise that the losses from the likes of L&G, Ilke, TopHat, Urban Splash, Swan, Lighthouse, and the rest of the mid 2010's wave of offsite manufacturers, adds up to easily a £1 billion if not more.

So what do we do? the first step is to go back to the Value stream and spend a bit of time proposing a future state VSM. Something like this.

Future state VSM for site process

Setting a target reduction in lead time of 15weeks, from 21 week to 6 weeks to match the factory we are aiming to balance site with the factory.
In a Lean transformation it is important to set ambitious targets that give a true competitive advantage and develop a sound strategy and plan to achieve them, the tool commonly used for this is Hoshin Kanri also know as Hoshin planning. It's powerful for strategic planning as it also ties into the lean culture and when done right helps guide the whole company in the right direction. Robert Camp's book the "lean leader" covers the Hoshin process in a good level of detail that's easy to follow and I highly recommend it.

First up is to set Breakthrough objectives, in this case we'll only look at the one and that is to balance site and factory lead times. From that we need to create strategies each with appropriate tactics to deliver their breakthrough objective. I discussed the first obvious one in my last post, the elimination of the 4 weeks of snagging. Snagging is rework, it's pure waste and Lean's 'built in quality' pillar offers the solution, practices like 'in station control' and 'error proofing' works well to ensure a right first time approach and remove the need for snagging. This can be delivered through training, short improvement events (Kizan events) to tackle common problems, and quality gateways to ensure no fault is passed forward. One of the big benefits of reducing the number concurrent active sites is that you can really focus on developing a crack install and finishing team, and if you're not already working like this at the factory it's great time to get the benefits both at the factory and onsite. Plus you can deliver both for less than £40k a fraction of the factory ramp up mentioned earlier.

So a strategy of 'eliminate snagging' gets the Tactics of Training, a focused Kizan burst (multiple events in a short space of time), and quality gateways. Lastly for snagging will be the Measurement targets, zero snags past the gateways and 100% defect recording at the gateways and anything afterwards, with 100% investigations on any snags that do slip through.
This all sounds like a tall order but I've actively delivered these results in a factory when implementing a quality gateway before the finishing line. I've never been prouder at work, than when I got to tell a decorator that "he was giving me the best module I've ever inspected" as he smashed my targets. The next day though someone else gave me an even better one really showing what was possible and we where only a portion of the way through the process.

The thing about Hoshin planning is that the strategies don't have to deliver the whole breakthrough objective in one go, the objective timeline could easily (and likely will) span multiple years. So a strategy or it's tactics can be focused on taking a step toward that goal. In this case we want to reduce 5 weeks install and 10 weeks of finishing to 28 days. That sort of change, is not going to happen over night, and will require steps in the right direction. In Lean this is know as the PDCA cycle as described by the American Society for Quality (ASQ)

The Plan-do-check-act Procedure

Plan: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.

Do: Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study.

Check: Review the test, analyze the results, and identify what you’ve learned.

Act: Take action based on what you learned in the study step. If the change did not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were successful, incorporate what you learned from the test into wider changes. Use what you learned to plan new improvements, beginning the cycle again.

With that in mind a sensible mid point is to bring the VSM closer to the future state diagram, by separating internal and external finishing. Completing the external finishing alongside the install all within a target of 6 weeks without any weather downtime and zero water ingress.
Now I mentioned a couple of posts back that I'd been talking with Paul Richards from GUR and he has exactly the kind of solution that could offer these results whilst forming the foundation for further strategies and PDCA cycles. 

Thunderhaus by GUR (photos curtesy of GUR)

The Thunderhaus is more than just a building site in a tent, it is intended to bring the factory conditions to the building site. With a clean and stable flooring, access walkways, integrated gantry cranes and storage it opens up so much potential.

Inside of the Thunderhaus (photos curtesy of GUR)

Immediate results protect the site from weather, a gantry crane designed for module handling and safe access systems. The conditions from the basis for so many Kizan events and the implementation Standardised work and 5S directly on site, factory style jigs and fixtures along with quality systems and further 4.0 solutions. Then in the future the possibilities extend alongside the best of factory innovations as a solid platform for robotics and automation. Every improvement in the factory there is the potential for matching ones onsite, to help keep the balance once it's achieved and ramp up from that 3 modules a day.

With deployment and development of the Thunderhaus as a tactic to help install and protect the modules a second tactic can be used to develop the process towards a full external finish at the end of 6 weeks is needed. This could well involve looking at DFMA and premanufactured Value (PMV), often there is an attempt to get as much external work completed in the factory, but this then leads to issues on site. Insulation and external cladding installed in the factory needs module to module zip up which can be a jigsaw of bits or a lot of cutting down standard sheets. Complex factory roofing work directly installed to the modules, can also cause issues in the factory. One tactic to help alleviate these problems could be the use of 2d panellised facades, using a specialist supplier. A company who's expertise is in a watertight envelope has a lot of potential, installed with the cranes, it's design wouldn't need to match to the module layout giving a lot more architectural flexibility.

A combination of Kizan and DFMA is also likely a key part to reducing the finishing time from 10 to 6 weeks for the intermediate step and beyond. I've worked on a number of solutions, material selections and design choices and then can be quite long projects. At this point getting the basics right is key and the same tactics for zero snagging can have a massive impact on lead times for finishing works, especially well managed quality gateways so it's worth rolling the 6 week finishing and 0 weeks snagging together at this stage.

These quality gateways are also key to the reduction of the hand over time, from weeks to just a couple of days, This is where the value of industry 4.0 and digital solutions can really shine, as information is updated to the client as each stage is finished. In my next post I'll be looking at the top line of the VSM, the tracking of information, and the golden thread in more detail. In my experience it's the failure to understand what's needed, when it's needed and where it comes from that caused all of the biggest delays and problems on projects.

For now though the Breakout objective, Strategies, Tactics and measurements are recorded in an X matrix. Following this, project teams and accountable people are assigned to the tactics, they then develop the plan to deliver and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will track results. Throughout this PDCA cycles will run and the information in the current state VSM will get updated with more and more details to help identify further strategies, tactics, and measurements until the Breakout objective is achieved.

And if you find these articles interesting and would like to discuss more or are interested in support for your offsite Hoshin Kanri, please feel free to leave a comment or message me on LinkedIn.