Jarvis Surgical – getting off to a strong, sustainable start.

Less then one year – workplace organization, setup reduction, and clearly document problems, justifying machine acquisitions.

Jarvis Surgical: How to get what is wanted, one step at a time.

In February of 2012, Dwight began to work with the leadership group at Jarvis Surgical in Westfield, Mass.  The leadership team was frustrated by their inability to improve on-time delivery and expand capacity without increasing costs. At that time the leadership team decided to focus on lead-time reduction, expanding capacity, improving on-time delivery while creating an environment favorable for continuous improvement and inclusion of all team members.

Next all employees took part in interactive Introduction to Continuous Improvement training.

Some highlights of the training, identification of improvement opportunities and application of the “scientific method”

  • Culture –Inclusion – After the Management team was given an overview of Lean focused on management in February in March of 2012 all employees were Introduced to Continuous Improvement with a full day of training and practice accomplished through simulations.

 

  • 5S (workplace organization) – We began workplace organization, one area at a time, training each team in why 5S is necessary, then the practices and philosophy, followed by systematically going through each of the five steps in sequence.  Success of the program is reflected in a customers comments “I can see you are doing 5S, it looks open and less cluttered”

 

  • SMED (setup reduction) knee cell – Matsurra M600ve.  Current time 180 minutes, Target – 60 minutes, Actual time after event – 35 minutesgood

 

GOOD PROCESS = GOOD RESULTS

IMG_1057All achievements where due to the hard work                                                                                      done by the team. 

Pictured is Operator extraordinaire Mike Wilson, a SMED team member.

  • VSM knee cell – the objective was to create velocity (lead-time reduction), improve quality, and synchronize operations while reducing cost and increasing capacity.  A major problem was documented, as an external supplier was responsible for more then doubling lead-time, disconnecting processes, increasing work-in-process while decreasing capacity and increasing costs.  As a result of this clarification the company has invested in new equipment to reduce or eliminate the need to use this external supplier. With the new equipment in place the company expects the following:

          1.    lead-time reduced from 28 days to 7 days or fewer,
          2.    production capacity increased by 50%,
          3.    costs reduced by 25%,
          4.    a 25% reduction in scrap and rework, 
          5.    work-in-process inventory reduced by 33%

 

  • Shipping kaizen – pathways and connections were clarified, showing some issues with incomplete hand-offs interrupting flow and creating re-work, reducing rework and lead-time.

 

Bill Burnette the QA Manager and Management Representative, works everyday supporting, encouraging and monitoring Jarvis’ continuous improvement effort: “We continue to make use of the lean tools we have learned as part of our long term and day to day decision making. These lessons are allowing us to grow the business and find new opportunities.”