Metal Fabrication And Lead Strategies

Manufacturing in a lean way is a method of discarding waste in different forms, such as materials and time, to save on business costs. In the metal industry, lean manufacturing would focus on the processing being as efficient as possible and as little metal being wasted as possible. The primary principles of lean manufacturing dictate that any waste manufactured should be kept at a minimum. Secondly, requirements in the market should be connected to manufacturing, and finally, there should be a value stream, where the whole process of the production of the product, with the suppliers and the consumer, should be one entity

Continuous Product Flow

Lean manufacturing promotes constant product flow. The teams and machinery are located in work cells, using a method called cellular manufacturing, wherein products are produced entirely in these cells. Each process is performed in its solitary cell. This system minimizes wait and handling of materials. Lean manufacturing advocates just-in-time (JIT) method for inventories. JIT removes inventory by only manufacturing parts when they are necessary. Establishing teams that can do multiple functions and have multiple abilities is also a function of lean manufacturing. It essentially is moving away from the production line, mass-production environment.

Using Bad Times to Improve

Amid these financially hard times, establishments should take the chance to work on improving the skills of their employees as well as their manufacturing processes including speeding up processes. Too many lie inactive and wait for business to get better – ultimately laying-off employees. Instead, they should capitalize on the current situation and find an opportunity – to visit other companies’ sites and even customer’s sites to see what they are doing to stay lean or become leaner. People and businesses learn from each other. You have the chance to learn if there are methodical steps in a process that could be disposed of, to save your clients time and money. Look for ways to increase the quality of a product. Offer training opportunities to employees to make them feel more a part of the team.

Cost savings must be put in place but the quality of the product must be maintained. Getting ideas from employees on how to save on costs is crucial. They can establish how to reduce wastes on the materials being used to formulate a product as well as when to shut down machinery when it is not needed.

One organization in the metal industry that takes a lean manufacturing approach is Maloya. Their lean approach makes them more efficient and also helps in them being green. They recycle any metal not used. In 2007 they received a DOL Lean Workforce Training Grant. Maloya developed a product line of heaters. Some of the product components only had a “touch time” of one hour, which means it only took an hour to make, but it still took two weeks from order to shipment for product fulfillment. By using lean tools, they analyzed the situation to discover how to take out the non-value add pieces in the process that promoted delay. They also improved their value stream and did value stream mapping. They minimized material handling times through the use of shadow boards to organize employee tools and implemented the cellular work centers. By reorganizing component and raw material staging areas they were also able to improve work flow.

Mapping the Value Stream

Value Stream Mapping is an additional tool in lean manufacturing. It helps to show what is needed to get a product to a customer and how materials are flowing. The person creating the map can look for improvements in the process and analyze the material flow. Processes should be categorized into three groups: value add, non-value add but needed, and waste.

Benefits of Lean

An advantage of using lean manufacturing in a metal fabrication setting includes waste minimization. This results in the lowering of costs to the organization. The flow of cash will be quicker and the cycles of production will become shorter. Not as many workers will be necessary to do certain tasks. Inventories can be kept at a minimum level. Equipment can be used at a more efficient level and used more often and perform more manufacturing jobs. Products will gain in quality and additionally, the quality of service toward customers will improve. Because of all of these improvements, profits and business expansion will increase due to lean manufacturing application.

Reto Hug is President of Maloya Laser which focuses on complex Metal Fabrication and laser cutting technologies using highly specialized laser systems targeting machinery, aerospace, medical, scientific and transportation requirements.

How Pitney Bowes Postage Meters Can Help Small Business

It can be easy to overlook, but believe it or not, Pitney Bowes postage meters can actually help just about any small business. Any firm worth its weight has to produce letters, billing invoices, packages, and any number of parcels that are sent using postage. Some businesses don’t believe themselves to be significant enough to necessitate postage meters, when in fact they are.

There are many different postage meters from Pitney Bowes that can accommodate any size business. For small businesses, mailing a few letters or invoices, bills, or packages can often seem like buying dollar items at the local store. It never seems like a lot at the time, but when you begin to add those small purchases up over time, the number can be quite surprising. This same notion applies to postage and sending letters.

If a small business sends out an average of five invoices, packages, or letters per day, that means that travels to and from the post office are required. Every visit made costs time and gas, assuming that trip is made by vehicle. These small expenses don’t seem major until, like the example given, they are added up over time. The expenditures can begin to add up relatively fast. Pitney Bowes understands this as well as any company, that’s why their collection of postage meters offer different options and capacities.

How many times have you added extra money to a letter because you thought it might surpass the weight limit for standard postage? If you simply double the postage, then you have been spending more than you should on these letters. A postage meter from Pitney Bowes solves this situation by weighing and calculating the expense to send the item based on its origin and destination.

Every time you add forty-two cents to a letter or package without reason is money you are taking away from the quality of the business. A postage meter is a great solution to over-stamping, as the term is also called.

Also, perhaps your company only sends an employee to the post office on an as-needed basis. However, are you aware of how often that need arises? Sometimes outgoing mail piles up, waiting for a weekly trip. That’s fine, but any day an invoice sits in the outbox is a day your income won’t be working for you. Having a Pitney Bowes postage meter in your office can allow you the chance to send out mail on a daily, and as-needed basis.

Add onto that the time that you, or an worker, has to take out of their productivity to journey to the post office and wait in line to have letters, packages, or other items weighed and the postage calculated. There’s no reason to give up productivity in order to have a constant flow of mail leaving your business. Pitney Bowes postage meters offer the ability for any size business to improve their business and, ultimately, exploit their profits and boost the bottom line.

Christopher Ulrich is the host of Postage.ws – a Postage System website featuring Pitney Bowes Postage Machines

Assembly Work Through Fulfillment Warehouses

If your company deals with complicated products that require assembly, such as gift baskets, then the chances are you could profit from outsourcing your assembly work to a fulfillment assembly warehouse.

Various organizations deal in common sets of products that usually need to be assembled before shipping. Perhaps your business offers gift baskets that need to be assembled before an order can be shipped. You might also offer free gifts, perhaps a box with five pieces of makeup, to encourage customers to purchase another larger item. Employing a fulfillment warehouse to assemble these kinds of orders (which are often called “kitting”), would be a good way to cut your expenses and man hours considerably.

Fulfillment Assembly Warehouses Are skilled in Fulfillment Assembly

Fulfillment assembly warehouses are dedicated to picking, packing, storing and shipping goods. Not only does using a fulfillment assembly warehouse save on storage space in your own warehouse, or even the need to have your own warehouse, but it could also save you money and time. Outsourcing your kit packing assembly will free up workers for more important things, leaving them free to work on the jobs that only they can do. With fulfillment warehouses experience in fulfillment assembly, you ensure your kits will be suitably assembled by a team of experts.

In today’s business market, it does not make good business sense to pay full time workers to complete jobs that could be easily outsourced. This is particularly true if you don’t have 40 hours of work every week for that person. When it comes to tasks like kitting, packaging and shipping, it just makes sense to contract the work out to an expert in the feild.

Warehouse Kitting on an As-Needed Basis

A second advantage of contracting assembly work through fulfillment centers is that you can have a number of kits assembled and ready to be shipped in a short space of time without losing any time from your own workers. If you have a specific set of products you anticipate shipping as a set in large quantities, fulfillment warehouses can prepackage these products and have make sure that they are ready to be shipped, therefore cutting down time between when an order is placed and when it is fulfilled. Consumers are not known for their patience, and the faster you can deliver the goods once they are ordered, the happier they will be. Satisfied customers lead to repeat and referred business, both of which add to your bottom line.

If you have a mail order company and deal in more than one product, or even if you deal in one specific product that tends to be ordered in quantity, outsourcing your assembly work through a fulfillment center is generally a good option as it will help increase your efficiency and allow you to dispatch the product faster. Don’t let your competitors discover this new warehousing strategy before you do. Each minute you wait is another chance for your competitors to get an advantage over you. Take immediate steps in order to start to streamline your kitting process and contract a fulfillment center.

Jeff Ehrlich is the head of FulfillmentPlusNY which operates fulfillment services for a litney of businesses globally.Contact Jeff for pick, pack and ship services.

Benefits Of ISO 9000 Certification

ISO is the International Organization for Standards and produces international standards. A network of standards institutes forms the ISO, of which there currently are 163 countries represented by these institutes. It can help a company to adopt ISO standards since the ISO is the world’s biggest producer of standards.

What is ISO 9000?

ISO 9000 is a group of standards from ISO for quality management systems QMS. This standard began as a standard specifically for manufacturing but has been used in other businesses. If a business wants to sell a product or do business internationally, being ISO 9000 certified will mean that it adheres to a high level of quality standards that are understood the world over and will attract more clients.

The importance of customer service and meeting quality requirements are characteristics of a company that is ISO 9000 certified. It provides a set of rules that have been followed successfully over time to manage the various processes of an organization to turn out a successful product. The standard describes what requirements for quality a company must meet to be effective. To ensure ISO 9000′s success, audits can be conducted internally by a company or by outside sources or clients.

ISO 9000 Principles

ISO 9000 is based on eight fundamental principles. The first is based on satisfying the customer and their needs. Being able to better utilize the resources available at a company improves efficiency and therefore customer satisfaction. Leadership importance makes up the second principle. Leadership is important because it brings together people and processes to streamline the whole production cycle. The third principle involves the people who make up a company. Everyone in the organization needs to have job ownership and be able to talk about any issue or questions they may have. This can lead to improvements because of communications with the people who are actually doing the work.

The fourth principle is process approach. The cycles of manufacturing a product have to be made into a consistent process. The more effective the process becomes, the faster it will be and more cost effective. The fifth principle builds upon the fourth, a large system is built out of all the smaller processes. All processes that have a common end result should act as one. This will build consistency and better efficiency in production. Principle six is improvement continuation. Nothing will be achieved instantaneously. Continual Process Improvement will be achieved through setting goals. The seventh principle is to make all decisions based on factual information. Information needs to be analyzed and decisions made from what is found. The final principle is to have a symbiotic relationship with suppliers. This aids in ordering speed and cost containment. Taking these principles in order will help an organization become more streamlined in its processes.

Benefits of ISO 9000

Improved quality management systems for a company can result in following ISO 9000. Adhering to the standard will help gain business for the company using it since it is so well-known for quality. ISO 9000 certification lets customers know they are a business’ focus. Some clients may not even consider doing business with a company that is not ISO 9000 certified. An increase in sales can oftentimes be attributed to being ISO 9000 compliant. Having better access to markets internationally is another attraction of the standard’s adoption. Processes are all documented, which lends to improved efficiency. Employees begin to take ownership of their roles in the company due to the improvements from ISO 9000 adoption, thus becoming more involved in the processes and communications.

Roger Hug is the Vice President of Sales Engineering of Maloya Laser, leaders in contract manufacturing and turnkey manufacturing servicing aerospace, scientific, transportation, medical and machinery requirements.