Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing is a principle developed in Japan.

The focus of this principle is reduction of errors, identifying bottle necks and unnecessary processes and reducting delays.
A logical consequence of this is that waste will be reduced, and therefore production costs will also be reduced.

By combining electronics, IoT and software (Industry 4.0), Steptronics has developed a concept that controls and indentifies all these aspects.
The goal is establishing “Flow” in your production, with as little waste as possible.

Our system works by using sensors. Sensors can be software based, such as connection to existing software like Scada, or hardware, developed by us to support machines that normally do not give feedback about it’s status, such as conventional production machines. These sensors can work outside of your normal production process, therefore it will not influence your existing process. There are nontheless options in our software that can influence this process, we call this actuators. Actuators can for example stop a process, or divert your product.
This makes our concept versatile, and suitable for both conventional and more advanced production lines.

Because we measure both before and after a production step, we have detailed data about manufacturing time, transition time, and idle time. Coupling this with a logged in user, we create an entire production overview, encompassing flow, idle times, human productivity, errors and transistion times from step to step. With a learning process we predict manufacturing time accurately and use planning and load balancing to optimize the flow.

Since we use sensors to count the number of products and supplies, we can create a signal to restock, both to inventory and at the machine on the premises, reducing inventory and again preventing waste in unused materials.

In case of multiple redundant production lines, a machine can be planned out for maintenance, using statistics for the ideal time, and our planner we recalculate ideal product routes to minimize loss.

Machine problems can be prevented by using indicative, measuring sensors, such a fourier sensors to listen to bearing problems, level indicators, deviation sensors measuring, for example, with or position of your product, and more. These sensors will alert the production monitor of problems, so that preventive maintenance can be planned in before the machine breaks down, again preventing production loss by machine outage.

All above mentioned features covers most of the lean manufacturing pinciples, not in theory, but by actually measuring, learning and improving with each step made. Your production will become one ‘living and learning’ machine where every single part is aware of eachother.

Steptronics covers the following Lean methodologies:

• Value Stream Mapping, giving insight into your production flow
• KanBan, JIT supplying and prioritizing, signals for restocking
• Poka-Yoke, Prevention of errors by measuring, indicating and if preferred intercepting errorneous production routes
• The three Mu’s:
  • Muri, Overload detection due to longer transistion times
  • Muda, Prevention of overproduction, long transport, unnecessary delays and too much stock
  • Mura, Measuring transistion times and concequently balancing capacity by actively replanning or spreading of capacity
• SMED Identifying bottle necks, by machine, man, as wel as logistic problems

We generate details reports of your machine, line or even the entire production, in which we indicate bottle necks and possible improvements.

Our system is also suitable for TPM (Total Productive Maintenance).

TPM not only encompasses maintaining productivity, but especially the maintenance of the machine park and how to prevent possible malfunctions.

With this method the main focus is productivity improvement and optimizing availability of the machines, in which they function as smoothly as possible.

Because we can place sensors, and even custom design these to your specification, we can notify you, often before the malfunction even occurs.

You can image for example sensors that:

• Do Fourier analysis, listening to your machine and bearings
• Measuring of deviation in supply, for example in rolls of material
• Reading (digitally and visually) of indicators, for example liquid levels
• Vision systems, missing parts, volume assessment, kleur, etc.

In TPM we support the following pillars, where our role in this is indicative:

• Kobetsu Kaizen – Focused Improvement
• Planned Maintenance
• Quality maintenance

Apart from measuring we have options to perform a physical action by using actuators, in both software and hardware. An actuator can be a call to Scada, but also a controller for stepper motor, hydrolic system or anything else.