Lean System at Hayes Manufacturers

Lean is a continuous improvement method adopted from Kaizen and Toyota Production

System (TPS); Lean manufacturing is a systematic method for waste elimination at the

workplace. The seven wastes are overproduction against the plan, waste in-process itself, defects,

unnecessary transportation, waiting time for man and machine, excess inventory stock and non-

value adding motions.

Hayes Manufacturers designs and manufactures of couplings, engine housing, bearing

supported stub shafts, engine and pump adaptors etc. at Michigan plant. Due to variable product

range and assembly parts, it's hard for them to manufacture and schedule dispatch on time in

their early days. When John Deer one of their clients approached them and asked “where we

were on our Lean journey?” they simply don't have any answer as they never planned any

scientific approach to handle their production and dispatch accordingly using a proper scientific

method. But the question itself given them the idea to adopt Lean System in their plant at various

departments so the overall process becomes smooth.

Hayes adopted Visual Management concept for minimizing late deliveries. Production

schedule and shipment handles by single person who was production control manager, he used

basic software like excel but due to critical problems and process planning at each stage it’s hard

to dispatch product on time and around 35% of their products dispatched late due to bottleneck

of operations and recovery of downtime. Visual scheduling using sheet metal board at each

department is what helped them for planning throughout the process to highlight operation and

problems at each stage. At schedule management Process management was firstly made on paper

then in excel and later on whiteboards, currently almost all visual boards are made up of steel

foundation. Screen printed board having various charts indicating inventory flow and planning of

parts was fixed at schedule department. Each cells of plant which is having various machineries
are drawn on board in independent table, name of job of that particular cell currently running

was indicate using marker. Table was further divided on hourly basis so each job starting and

finish time can clearly see on board. Also various magnets having different colors indicating a

task which is currently carried out on job within cell are shown on boards. Shipping board which

was synchronized with production board gives exact timing of a job that should be pickup from

production and send it to the dispatch department. Production control manager handles the

production board and set up the time for scheduling. Shipping board also visualized using

various colored magnets which indicates different operations such as yellow means job has been

pulled to shipping department, green means job has been picked, red means there is no material

for that particular job, pink means waiting to pick a job and blue means the job is hold due to

customers is hold on credit basis. These boards namely production and shipping boards are

routinely updated and meeting were carried out in the morning session so there was no any error

while production and dispatch level. Without these boards all the activities in scheduling and

processing job has been tedious task over the years, since due to Lean Visual management,

pictured is entirely cleared and visualized on larger scale there is absolutely no wastage of time

in dispatching the order. These boards at various department shows effectiveness of plant

capacity and gives crystal clear image what’s really happening in cell, instead just imagining

process and planning accordingly on paper and in the head. Boards also showed whose on

vacation so task can be managed effectively without any downtime. Inventory supply time also

visualized on the board, trucks stoppage time predetermined hence there was no any inventory

backlash in the system. Due to Just In Time approach inventory were managed efficiently, which

was another tool of Lean system to eliminate wastage of inventories and holding them in storage
department unnecessarily. Since shipping board was also divided into 5 minutes time span it is

easy to calculate job timing and schedule accordingly further activities.

Production board also indicates parts per hour produced, the target was set up earlier and

production was calculated during each hour. Less no. of products against targeted nos. indicated

with a cause of lower no. of jobs produced. If parts produced were more as that of targeted nos.

then it gives the idea of re-scheduling of target nos. It also helps to visualize production task,

downtime, errors without interrupting any cell.

Inventory board based on Kanban system was fixed at each department which gives

inventory required during operation. Currently processed inventory and remained inventory was

also visualized on the board so it gives scheduling for inventory to purchase. Daily board

indicates late shipments, rejected jobs, machine down, accidents etc in their charts so it gives an

idea what necessary action must be taken to prevent any damage during the process thus

minimizing various waste within the system. Indicated nos. of a various task then pulled to trend

board which gives an idea about production process over monthly, quarterly, yearly etc. This

also helps to manage business boards which indicate the health of a plant and its effectiveness

over the period. Since the data for each task was monitored so effectively there was hardly any

waste during the entire operation.

Lean Visual Management helped Hayes manufacture to eliminate their dispatch late

problem from 35% to 3%. Since each operation, cell, and the department has their own visual

board indicating process, inventory and time required to finish the task which is linked together

gives metrics for measurement of effectiveness and quality and quantity of the job and thus for

overall plant. By adapting Lean methods inventory was utilized effectively, performance was
driven to better and quality loss was minimized at Hayes manufacturing plant and it becomes a

success story to adopt Lean Management principles.