Some Call it Juggling

Driving down the expressway my wife commented on a woman putting on makeup next to us. (Guys, I’m looking at you too. I’ve caught you shaving.) That’s a bad example of parallel processing. Don’t do it!

It’s different in the plant. Here, parallel processing is generally a good thing, particularly in changeover. There are 3 ways that parallel processing can help changeover:

Multiple simultaneous operations – In changeover, while we should eliminate labor hours where possible, the focus must always be on downtime rather than labor hours. An hour of downtime costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. An hour of labor, fully costed, is twenty to thirty dollars in most plants. If throwing more people at the line will reduce the changeover downtime between products, by all means throw more people at the line.

In this same vein, make sure that people are waiting on the changeover rather than vice versa. Some plants require a quality inspection to release the line for production. In my experience, too many plants wait till changeover is finished before calling the inspector. I once waited 4 hours for an inspector. That was 72,000 products not produced that day.

The inspector must to be on the line waiting for changeover to finish. The line must never be waiting for a person.

External operations – Wherever possible, changeover tasks should be done with the line running. All cleaning materials and change parts should be staged before the line stops. All materials should be issued by the warehouse before the line stops.

Additional sets of parts should be purchased where necessary. There is no reason for a line to be stopped while machine parts are cleaned. Yes, an additional set of parts might cost $50,000. That’s cheap if it saves you a couple thousand dollars in daily downtime. They’ll pay for themselves in less than a month of changeovers.

Start before stopping – Don’t wait for the entire line to finish the run before starting changeover. As soon as the last bottle leaves the orienter, start changeover. As soon as the last bottle exits the filler, start working on it. And so on down the line.

Don’t parallel process while driving, anyway.

Do parallel process in your plant.

It means more product out the door and more money.