Waste represents one of the biggest threats to any manufacturing or industrial operation. Wasted time, money, and resources can wreak havoc on a business’s bottom line and can add up over time to cause widespread issues throughout the organization.
One of the most popular and effective ways to minimize waste is to apply lean manufacturing process to your operation. Lean manufacturing is a methodology that focuses on minimizing waste within manufacturing systems while simultaneously maximizing productivity.
But what exactly is considered waste? In lean manufacturing, “waste” is defined as anything that does not add value to a product or operation. As you may have guessed, that can encompass a wide range of areas within a facility.
To help break it down, let’s walk through the eight wastes that lean practitioners agree on – and how you can go about minimizing them in your everyday processes.
1. Defects
Product defects caused by damaged or scratched materials like sheet metal can cause manufacturing facilities thousands (if not millions) of dollars in scrap, lost time, and resources – not to mention the risk of total product failure for the end customer. That’s a big deal.
Big Steel Rack sheet storage systems help prevent your sheet metal from being damaged, which helps eliminate the threat of wasted material, time, and resources – while also ensuring your team is more efficient and lean in the process.
2. Waiting
Waiting for the correct material to be found, depalletized, and brought to the work center is another massive waste that can cost manufacturing facilities thousands of dollars in under-utilized capacity and missed production.
Big Steel Rack sheet metal storage systems help prevent waste caused by waiting or searching for the right material by ensuring each material type is assigned a specific location that is labeled and easily accessible. Our returnable material pallets can also be used to bring sheet metal onsite directly from the material supplier before loading it directly into the rack. This eliminates any wasted time needed to transfer the material from wood pallets to our Big Steel Rack pallets.
3. Excess Inventory
That’s right, even your inventory can is waste – wasted capital and wasted space for value-added processing. But while it is considered waste, we understand that some levels of inventory are typically necessary – for now – until you can eliminate all of the other wastes and reduce variability. So for now, let’s take a look at how we can help you work to eliminate some of the inventory you currently have.
Big Steel Rack storage systems allow you to organize all your necessary sheet metal inventory into a high-density vertical storage space. This helps free up 40-50% of the space previously used to store your inventory. Big Steel Rack sheet metal storage systems allow you to increase your space for value-added production by consolidating inventory into our high-density system.
4. Overproduction
Overproduction is said to be the worst of all the eight deadly wastes because it contributes to waste in so many other areas. Overproduction, or production of more than what the customer has ordered or is scheduled to ship, results in an increased finished-goods inventory. In other words, waste! It causes wasted capacity that could be used to produce another product that needs to ship. It also creates more opportunity for the finished-goods inventory to be damaged in storage. The finished-goods inventory needs to be transported again and again to create room for additional production and storage.
Big Steel Rack helps eliminate waste caused by overproduction by making it easier to stage the exact amount of material needed for a given run, directly at the work center.
5. Transportation
Any movement of raw material, components, or final product that does not create value to your customer is a waste. Decreasing transportation directly decreases your cost to manufacture and increases the amount of time your team can spend adding value for your customers.
Big Steel Rack helps eliminate the wasted transportation of moving your sheet metal from one location to another within your facility. It also helps consolidate the total area required to store all of your sheet metal, decreasing the transportation time from one end of the storage space to the value-added processes.
6. Extra Motion
Similar to transportation, any movement your team has to take to access your raw material that does not create value for your customers is a waste.
Big Steel Rack eliminates the need to dig through stacks of sheet metal to access the needed material type. Our systems reduce the amount of motion required to access the correct material, also reducing the time required for each material changeover and increasing your efficiency.
7. Non-Utilized Talent
Any time your team members are currently spending on wasteful activities is also wasting the talent and brain power that could be focused on improving jobs, processes, and products. Because this waste may be more silent and easily lost in the status quo of day-to-day activities, it can be especially damaging to your bottom line over time. That is a main reason the key focus of lean cultures is to “see the waste.” If you can see it, you can change it.
Big Steel Rack helps eliminate this waste by allowing your team to dedicate more time toward value-added activities or improvements – rather than wasting time searching for needed material or digging it out from a disorganized stack. By decreasing scrap from damaged material, Big Steel Rack also reduces the amount of rework required, helping your team better utilize its skills on a daily basis.
8. Excess Processing
Waste is also often caused by doing more work to manufacture a product than the customer is paying for or finding valuable. This can also include a non-optimized process that causes your team to work harder than necessary to produce the desired results. When your team has no clear process for storing sheet metal, it can end up stacked in any open space, resulting in additional time needed to find and access the material later on.
Big Steel Rack helps eliminate this waste by providing a clear process for storing your sheet metal in an organized system, reducing the over-processing required to find and access material.
Minimize Waste from Top to Bottom with Big Steel Rack
Big Steel Rack is the most innovative high-density storage solution for organizing and storing your sheet metal safely and efficiently. Our sheet metal storage racks and metal tubing and bar stock racks are made in the U.S. to help OEMs, job shops, sheet metal fabricators, and manufacturing companies in general increase floor space, streamline organization, and improve safety – so you can spend more time focusing on production and less time searching for the product you need.
Contact us today to get started building the perfect storage solution for your business.
Have questions or comments about your operation’s lean processes? Drop us a line below to let us know!
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