Lean Manufacturing: Slim Your Waste

For the last several years, Lean Manufacturing has been growing in the printing and packaging industries. PIA/GATF started presenting Quick Changeover training to printers and packaging companies starting in 1993 and implementing Total Production Maintenance starting in 1998. The problem printers have had with Lean is they have felt there are too many variables and that Lean applies to manufacturers that make widgets or automobiles. However, appeals for improving process efficiency in the printing industry date back to 1914 in articles in local printing trade publications. Lean Manufacturing is all about cost and money, so printing and packaging managers must first understand Lean’s perspective of waste.

Traditionally, the printing and packaging industries have looked at waste in terms of paper and substrate makeready waste, running waste, and roll waste. Consequently, printing and packaging managers typically start to look at lead time when a job enters initial production steps, such as making proofs or plates, or starting makeready on press.

Lean Manufacturing, however, looks at everything in terms of lead time of the value stream. A value stream is the time and cost of all materials and processing actions and activities that are required, starting when raw materials are delivered to the plant and continuing through the final converted product being delivered to the customer and payment received.

Throughout the value stream for folding carton operations, for example, there are two types of issues and activities that occur: value-added and non-value-added. Value-added (VA) activities are process actions that actually add value by converting the form, fit, and/or function of materials and parts into printed package products. For example, VA for a folding carton producer would include the actions of printing, cutting, folding and gluing, packaging the folding cartons, and shipment to the customer. The customer pays for and specifies VA activities. Typical VA times to produce and ship one item for a folding carton job (sheet/carton) are shown in Table 1.

Non-value-added (NVA) activities are process actions that consume resources but don’t add any value to the product, or even worse, result in product that is unacceptable to the customer. Plain and simple, NVA activities are considered waste.

Waste can be placed in eight categories from the Lean perspective, depicted by the acronym DOWNTIME (Table 2).

• Defective product—Product that is unacceptable and that customers will not pay for;

• Overproduction—Producing quicker, sooner, and more than the next process or customer needs or can handle;

• Waiting—On people, materials, information;

• Non-utilized people—Failure to seek problem-solving input from people working in the processes;

• Transporting—Waste from transporting and moving supplies, materials, work-in-process, and inventory around the plant;

• Inventory—Raw materials, work-in-process, final product;

• Motion—Unnecessary motion/movement by people; and

• Extra processing—Any actions that do not add any value, such as checker-checking-the-checker and extra processing steps that don’t add any value to the product.

Typically, NVA activities will take up more than 98 percent of the total value stream lead time. Using the data from the examples in Tables 1 and 2, the value-added to non-value-added ratio is one second VA to 1438 seconds NVA (601.24 sec. to 864,000 sec.).

Once printing and packaging managers know what waste truly is and where to begin looking for it, tools from the Lean toolbox can be applied to find and eliminate waste. The benefits of implementing Lean practices can be significant and go right to the bottom line. pP

Ken Rizzo is the director of consulting for PIA/GATF, leading the association’s team of consultants and educators. An experienced process improvement specialist, certified in Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and Lean Manufacturing, he has more than 36 years of commercial, label, and folding carton industry experience.