Project Case Study: Reducing Manufacturing Support Costs

The customer challenge

Glass fibre insulation is produced by fibres generated by molten glass passing through a “spinner” that has 13-14,000 holes. These spinners are changed every 4-5 hours, and the project focussed on their manufacture and refurbishment. Prior to the project about 60-70% were made in-house, the balance outsourced. It was felt that there was capacity to make all of them and have further capacity to support the rest of the group, but this was not being realised.

PMI’s contribution

The project was the focus of a delegate on PMI’s Green Belt course. He led the team in applying the PMI Improvement Cycle, initially concentrating on the definition of the processes behind the problem. This highlighted new aspects to investigate, and the team worked though all the parts of the Improvement Cycle, understanding the variation, carrying out tests which validated the theories. and then implementing the changes.

Achievements

• Specific changes made as a result of the trials produced remarkable
• Improvements, eventually cutting the processing time from 2 hours to 10
• Minutes. The financial savings amount to €500,000 per year on outsourcing.

Wider applicability

This project demonstrates once again the validity of the whole PMI approach, ranging from PDSA for learning, through the Improvement Cycle as a structure and discipline for relevant use of the tools, to live use of visible control charts to understand variation. As we have often seen before, one successful project can produce cash savings that more than pay for a substantial improvement effort. It is also a typical example of savings achieved during a training programme by many delegates over the years.