Efficiency yields better delivery times

FOCUSED: Richard Goldblatt, a lead technician, is seen on the Parmatech-Proform plant floor. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
FOCUSED: Richard Goldblatt, a lead technician, is seen on the Parmatech-Proform plant floor. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

When Plant Manager Anthony Girard joined East Providence-based Parmatech-Proform in March 2015, with a mission of furthering lean manufacturing efforts, his prior experience had taught him to expect pushback.

“Most resistance that exists when you go to deploy lean comes from people feeling like what they’ve been doing for a long time isn’t OK and now it’s being scrutinized,” Girard said. “One of the great things about this company that I learned was that this [mind-set] did not exist.”

Instead, Girard found that at Parmatech – one of four sister companies operated by ATW Cos. of Warwick and a supplier of custom-manufactured metal-injection molding components – employees were enthusiastic about finding new, better ways of doing things.

“The ownership of our company is definitely people-centric and people are allowed to explore and try new things without risk of being scrutinized, accused or punished for something that doesn’t work well,” Girard said.

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Upon Girard’s arrival, Parmatech built on what lean efforts were started in late 2013 and implemented several elements of lean, such as 5S, visual workplace, standardization and Kaizen events focusing on the Eight Wastes.

Girard said the go-to tool is 5S: The Parmatech team looked at how to organize the workspace most efficiently. They kept items that had a known use and the less an item was used, the farther away it was kept. Girard said they removed Dumpsters full of items. Then they created visual displays of the standards to ensure that items were only there if they were part of the standard.

With its lean efforts, Parmatech made a leap to a visual workplace in more than one way. Looking at how to eliminate waste, people might first look to their trash cans to see what’s there, but at Parmatech, they looked at different kinds of waste and focused on time.

Girard said he would not know what work was being done, so he’d ask the operator, who would say that he already explained the same thing to multiple people.

“We’re interrupting the product flow by asking questions,” Girard said. The solution was to create visual aids with whiteboards that clearly show who is working on what and when.

“We want to be able to conduct our work and know what’s coming up next and not speak to each other. That was a goal,” Girard said, adding that they don’t want to discourage speaking, but for it to not be vital to the work.

Girard said the 42 employees at the plant welcomed the visual aids.

“There’s this mental burden that comes with wondering who’s going to walk in the room next and ask what I’m working on,” he said. “[The scheduling boards] empower them to say, ‘I’m working on this because our visual communication tool told me I’m working on this.’ ”

Kaizen events also led to significant changes at the plant. In a Kaizen event, a short-term project is implemented to improve a process.

One Kaizen event involved gutting the shipping department and discussing how it would ideally look and operate. A team, including shipping department members, wrote a plan before putting the department together that way, “living with it for a week” then making additional changes.

As a result, the biggest tangible outcome of 2015’s lean efforts was a positive shift in on-time delivery rates. At the start of 2015, they were 30-40 percent, but grew to 85-87 percent by the end of the year, Girard said.

Girard said that while sustaining the initial improvements, there is more work to be done in other departments. He likens this to rolling a ball up a ramp. As progress is made, the ball is rolled higher, tools need to be in place, like a wedge, to sustain those increases. He is confident in continued progress.

“It’s the spirit of our employees. It’s not the leadership; it’s not the structure that we’ve provided. Those things merely harness the spirit of our employees and allow them to flourish,” he said. •

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