Operational Excellence Seminar Journey - Tailor-made by Lean management expert Jianhong Fei for the middle and senior management of enterprises and core operational teams, integrating expert lectures, benchmarking visits and practical seminars, focusing on the main line of “from concept to practice”, in-depth deconstruction of Lean and Operational Excellence Benchmarking Cases, and assisting in the transformation and upgrading of the organization.
On July 16th, 2010, a group of more than 20 members from Lean Six Sigma Committee of Shanghai Management Science Society (SMSS) visited Siemens Switchgear Shanghai Minhang Plant. Ltd. has been ranked as one of the top 500 industrial enterprises in Shanghai in terms of sales revenue for 7 consecutive years since 2000, and its products have been honored by Shanghai Electrical Appliances Industry Association as famous and excellent products in the industry for 4 consecutive years since 2003. In 2006, the company was honored as one of the top 10 enterprises in China's electrical industry in terms of growth rate for three consecutive years with a growth rate of more than 30% by the Electrical Times magazine.
All the visitors arrived at the Minhang factory early in the morning and were warmly received by Mr. Chu and Mr. Zhu, who are in charge of IE in the factory. First of all, Mr. Shen Mingli, Vice General Manager of Siemens Switchgear Co., Ltd. made a speech to welcome the members. Then, Jianhong Fei, on behalf of Lean Six Sigma Committee, awarded Mr. Shen with the title of Siemens Switchgear Enterprise Visiting Base. After that, Mr. Zhu Yongbin, Process Engineer of Industrial Engineering Department, and Mr. Chu Jun, Senior Manager of Production Department, made an introduction of the company and the history of lean improvement activities since 2008 and its results. From the introduction, it can be seen that Siemens Switchgear Company has gained initial results and greater benefits in nearly two years of lean improvement, and the single-piece flow assembly line has been improved to a new level of efficiency and productivity without large investment and additional operators. The establishment of single-piece flow assembly line, U-shape production line, Kanban material supermarket, 44% reduction of inventory, nearly 30% reduction of plant area, and 27% and 43% increase of productivity of two product families are convincing proofs.
After the introduction by Mr. Zhu, the expert gave the on-site improvement training, Mr. Li Hong combined his own experience and some examples from the production unit design, production capacity planning, production equalization design and bottleneck management, etc. to explain to you in depth. Mr. Li Hong did not introduce too much theoretical knowledge about Lean, but focused on the practical experience and insights behind the Lean theory, which were gained from his decades of Lean and management experience, and thus have high practical application value and theoretical height. For example, when introducing the U-shaped line, Mr. Li Hong not only introduced what the U-shaped line is and how it works, but also explained in detail how to design the U-shaped line with the characteristics of the company's own production line and what kind of problems are likely to occur in the actual application, the root causes of these problems and how to solve these problems. Through the training, everyone had a deeper and more intuitive understanding of on-site improvement, and everyone said they had gained a lot. Mr. Lin from Ingersoll Rand said that Mr. Li Hong's training gave us an important inspiration, that is, when applying advanced concepts and systems in management, we must combine them with the characteristics of the company and the employees, and not blindly copy them. Mr. Yang from Norgren and Mr. Chen from Vigor Engineering Co., Ltd. also said that Mr. Li Hong's training hit the key point of the actual production process, and that his way of thinking and thinking about problem solving is very good for reference, and it can serve as a good guide for the future work related to Lean and management.
After lunch, after making basic safety protection, all the members were led by Mr. Zhu and Mr. Chu from Siemens to start the long-awaited visit to the production workshop. We were impressed by the spacious, bright, comfortable, clean and orderly workshop. Siemens staff led us to visit each workshop and gave us a detailed introduction, and exchanged opinions with the club members, who also used pen and paper to record what they saw and thought from time to time. Through the visit, we found that lean thinking is applied very deeply in Siemens Switchgear Factory. Not only in the “hard” aspect of Kanban, visualization, lean warehouse and pull system, but also in the “soft” aspect of standardization, capability realization, continuous improvement and lean logistics. One of the most impressive things is the “three i system” in the factory, which is a measure for continuous improvement, encouraging factory employees to put forward various improvement suggestions. Through the “three i system”, Shanghai Siemens Switchgear Company can save millions of cost every year.
The one-day visit came to an end very quickly, and the members could not get enough of it. They exchanged contact information with Mr. Chu and Mr. Zhu and hoped that there would be more communication opportunities in the future. The committee also sincerely invites them to come to our forum to communicate with more friends who are committed to Lean Improvement.
Finally, a group photo was taken to conclude this successful visit. I think this visit is a satisfying and fruitful experience for both Siemens Switchgear and Lean Six Sigma Club, and it is really a worthwhile trip! The road to Lean is still a long way to go for any person or organization. We are just on the road, there are still a lot of difficulties waiting for us to overcome and a lot of tasks waiting for us to complete, which also means that there will be more opportunities waiting for us to grasp. We hope that all leaners can make their own contribution to the process of modernization. The never-ending pursuit of improvement truly embodies the spirit of Lean.
