Lean Supply and Quality Management

Case Study Introduction
Feit Components is a first tier supplier to the automotive industry and also produces several components for the aftermarket sector. The company started to fully manufacture in 1980, and currently employ 300 people.
Over the last two years Feit Components have lost two of their major orders to overseas competitors. In an attempt to improve the manufacturing performance to be able to continue in a competitive environment, the company has employed you, as an expert in Lean principles, to turn around their manufacturing performance.
Task
Analyse the following data and prepare a report to be presented to the Board of Directors, assessing the current state of the manufacturing system and demonstrating a vision for the future.
Production Processes
An initial analysis of the production data identified that the Tubular manufacturing area is one of the more profitable areas of the company, in particular the product family that contains the three parts, TB115, TB116 and TB201, which are high value, high volume, and runner products.
Tubes TB115 and TB116 consist of an outer tube and an inner tube, which are called carrier and inner tube, respectively. Therefore, two separate production lines are designed, one for carriers and other for inner tubes. At the end of the tubular manufacturing process, the inner tube is manually inserted into the carrier, before passing to the final assembly. It is then packed and sent out to the customer.
Tube TB201 is sold to the aftermarket sector and consists of just a carrier tube. Therefore it does not require passing through the first assembly process, and passes direct to the final assembly and packing processes.
Feit Components is currently producing to mass production principles. The machines have a functional layout (Figure 1) and produce parts in large batches. The key manufacturing processes for the carriers include sawing, turning (lathe work), milling, painting through to assembly and packing. The sequence for the inner tube is from laser cutting, manual turn and welding.
Because of the short cycle time and high set up time the batch size is high, 2000 (almost every product every month). The painting process is a fully automated and works with a twin pallet system which holds 6 products in each pallet. This enables the operator to load pallet A with 6 components whilst the 6 components in pallet B are within the paint booth and are automatically sprayed. At the end of the cycle the pallets are switched and the process starts again with pallet B being loaded and pallet A in the booth.
The products are packed onto partitioned trays with 20 tubes per tray and 10 trays per pallet. The customer orders in multiples of trays.
• All moves within the same section are done manually , using trolleys.
• All moves between sections are done by fork lift truck (a very scarce shared resource!)
• Midlands Steels Ltd supplies bar stock to Feit Components on Mondays.