BookMasters Blog

8 Costly Issues- Lean Strategy helps minimize printers’ downtime 

According to an article from American Printer, “8 Costly Issues,” by Ken Rizzo,“If your not adding value, you are creating waste.  Printers add value when their processes change or convert the form, fit, and/or function of materials and items into the final product” (p. 20). 

Here is a list and description of 8 costly issues obtained from American Printer:

1)      Defective Product encompasses the cost of time and raw materials spent manufacturing unacceptable product.  Waste from product defects includes employee time as well as materials and equipment used to inspect, sort, handle, and re-run defective product.

2)      Overproduction occurs when product is manufactured faster and sooner than the next process can handle or in excess of customers’ actual needs. 

Overproduction symptoms include: pulling jobs off a machine in the middle of a production run to make room for another job, production overtime that customers don’t pay for, large amounts of floor space clogged with WIP skids and process bottlenecks.  Overruns from poor estimating may result in warehouses filled with finished goods inventory that customers often don’t need and won’t buy.  Excess product takes up space, ties up capital, and is thrown away.

3)      Waiting happens when some processes are held up pending the completion of other processes.  Examples include downtime, machine breakdowns, long make-readies and setups, and defective product awaiting inspection.  Other examples include waiting for delivery of raw materials or clarification of information.

4)      Non-utilized people results when employee’s knowledge, skills, creativity, process experience and teamwork are not used.  Such waste results from antiquated thinking, department politics, resistance to change, fear of repercussions from new ideas, slow feedback, poor hiring practices and insufficient investment tin effective training. 

5)      Transporting Waste occurs when supplies, materials, QIP, and raw materials inventory are scattered across a plant.  The cost of people’s time and extra equipment required valeting tooling, materials, and WIP load is NVA waste. 

6)      Inventory may include dollar costs of materials purchased and floor space required for excessive raw materials and WIP.  If the final product is stored prior to delivery to customers, waiting for payment is defined as waste. 

7)      Motion is excessive and unnecessary human motion and movement.  This includes time spent searching for and retrieving tools and materials, poor process layout, waste from outdated technology and pool component conditions. 

8)      Extra processing refers to any actions that don’t add value.  It may include extra time spent on processing jobs due to long equipment change-over; resolving quality related print problems; rigging bindery equipment to resolve layout problems, redundant actions and activities resulting from poor job planning, inadequate materials, and mechanical equipment problems stemming from substandard equipment conditions. 

(Ken Rizzo is Printing Industries of America’s director of consulting custom training and the Center for Lean Practices.  Contact him: krizzo@printing.org )

American Printer … Technology, Management, Products, Solutions, May 2009