OK, so I started to tell you about a 6S workshop I conducted at a local automotive stamper.

I had already conducted a 6S with the same group in a maintenance area a few weeks back.  This time we were going to do an operating area.  We focused on a small press that also stamped (or welded?) four nuts to the piece. 

The area itself was actually fairly clean and there wasn't much around to organize (as opposed to the maintenance area...we pretty much got through just one S there.)  The group quickly focused on a piece of auxiliary equipment that fed the nuts through four tubes (four nuts were installed on each work piece) to the press.  There were two different types of nuts that were used.  If an operator dumped the wrong type of nuts into the hopper of the machine (which vibrated the nuts and got them aligned correctly to go into the tubes) bad things happened...mostly just a lot of time lost as the operator had to clear out the tubes and the machine.  So we had an error-proofing opportunity.

Here's what the team came up with:

• Color coding the machines (there were two of them, one for each type of nut),
• Color coding the boxes the nuts were packaged in,
• Contacting the vendor to see if the nuts could be packed in different size boxes.
• Installing separate racks for storing the boxes of nuts rather than just having material handling deliver them on a pallet.

So, the situation might not be error proofed but it will be harder to make a mistake (easier to do things right).

All this got the group talking about how much inventory of the nuts were needed.  Seems that material handling always delivers a pallet-load of the nuts and that last about four weeks.  Now that the boxes are on the racks it will be easy to formulate a visual pull system for the nuts. 

We did eventually get around to some Sorting, Straightening and Sweeping....and lots of labeling.