Launching a new assembly line is challenging. Dealing with issues with the tooling, components, and operators are just the start. Once things start to run we need to assure production is kept at rate and with quality. At my company, there is a process that needs to be executed prior to the start of regular production called “run at rate” in which we measure and certify that the supplier is able to meet the required contractual rate in order to support our assembly plants.
The intent of this project is to improve the performance of a single station on a new assembly line, station 410. It is currently our constraint, presents the highest complexity of the assembly steps executed and generates 3.8% of scrap due to several factors. Currently, it is running at 42s cycle time and needs to go down to 38s at a minimum to meet our required demand and pass the run at rate activity. This station is composed of six positions, of which four that add value to the product. All activities will be focused on those six positions with an overall goal of improving cycle time, reducing the number of rejects and downtime. Further details can be found on Figure 1 – Project Charter and Figure 4 – Process Map. …show more content…
Project Charter for improving STA410 performance. Adapted from iSixSigma (2015).
The business justification for this project is related to the ability to meet the required demand by the customer and the direct loss of units coming from the inability to run at rate. The inability to meet the demand would also impact the customer with a daily loss of 218 units which could generate an impact of millions of dollars very