With the development of the times and the progress of the society, the so-called “specializing in” require the professional work is left to the professional people.Equipment manufacturers should generally focus on functional R&D design, assembly and commissioning, and graphite machining should be handed over to a dedicated factory. Choosing the right graphite machining supplier is an important task for the purchasing department and supplier management department.
Whether it is the review of graphite machining suppliers, visits to the factories, investment acquisition evaluations, or the management of existing in-situ existing materials, there is a lot of on-site observation. On-site observations are often limited by time. It is necessary for the relevant personnel use piercing eyes to quickly evaluate and judge the site in a short period of time. Of course, you trust me, you can cooperate in a few words; you don’t trust me, It’s all in vain to make a movie for you.
1. The importance of on-site observation
On-site observation is the basis for continuous improvement. Toyota’s Ohno Naichi did the best of on-site observation. Even on the factory rest day, he will bring the management personnel to the scene, let people stand in the workshop for a quiet hour and then point out the need for improvement. Only in this way can we truly achieve the PDCA cycle.
As a customer, we should go to the site of the graphite machining supplier to understand its cost structure, production efficiency and quality control. Business operations are a big system, and all links are closely related and affect each other. For graphite machining suppliers, any details on the spot can be seen. Any big problem can be found its source from the scene. Even if you spend a limited amount of time, you can fully grasp the key information of the plant operation by grasping the key points. The following is a combination of macroscopic systems and management details to talk about how to conduct on-site observations.
2. On-site atmosphere
At the scene, you can first visually see the most authentic employee mentality. The high morale staff will be in stark contrast to the awkward and indifferent employees. Speak a few words with the field workers, and you can get an important first impression from the workers’ facial expressions and body language, because these directly reflect the workers’ emotions and satisfaction with the factory.
Walking around the workshop can be observed to see if there is any unevenness, such as when the machine is in automatic processing, the workers are doing nothing for a long time, or some workers at the station are waiting for materials for a long time. The existence of this phenomenon indicates that the factory lacks lean management and the utilization rate of personnel is low. The idle employees will also affect the working atmosphere of others. The overall work efficiency is low and the cost is necessarily higher.
You should pay attention to whether the light in the graphite parts processing workshop is sufficient, whether the air circulation is smooth, whether there is odor on the scene, whether the noise is too big, and whether the workshop is neat, because these will directly affect the workers’ mood, which will affect the production efficiency and product quality. It’s hard to imagine a factory that its atmosphere is lazy, low-lying, indifferent, and its employees is resentful or idle, able to do products better and create benefits.
3. Space utilization and layout
Many factories in China are have a fondness for the grandiose. The bigger the production workshop, the better. The result is often low utilization. The equipment and process layout are very scattered. In addition to wasting space, the materials are also carried out in the factory in a lot of unnecessary transportation. Most of the factories in developed countries look less spectacular and even slightly cramped, but the space utilization rate is high and the transfer efficiency is also high.
Transportation vehicles not only take up space, but also operate at high cost, and encourage unnecessary material movement. In principle, the production materials used on the same day should be stored along the production line instead of being stored in several storage areas. Tools and tooling should be placed as close as possible to the machine. The layout of the factory should ensure the smooth flow of the product and avoid any partitions. If the material handling distance is long, the transportation route is repeated, or the number of handling times is large in the graphite machining factory, it shows that the layout is unreasonable and the space utilization is not ideal. It also shows that the production line has not been assembled as much as possible.
4. Site standardization
Standards are the best state and unified execution reference. There is no improvement without a standard. There are many standards for graphite machining and production sites, including operation and quality standards, 5S and safety standards, operation and maintenance standards, process and rework standards, safety stock standards, and so on.
Many graphite machining plants have SOPs (standardized operating procedures) on site, and we can observe whether these standards have missing items, whether they are easy to implement, and whether there are breakpoints in the middle. Check whether the written, spoken, and consistent are consistent, and whether the quality control points are highlighted by eye-catching signs or colors.
By observing the specific operation process of different employees in the same process of graphite machining, it is possible to find out whether there are differences, including the order of actions, the strength of operation, and whether there are any omissions. Differences indicate that employees lack standardized operational training, and the likelihood of product variability is greatly increased.
5. Quality control
On-site observation should focus on the treatment of defective products in the graphite machining workshop. A good graphite machining plant exposes the problem rather than covering up defective and scrap. For example, use a light to focus on a defective product, or use a red label to illuminate it, so that you can immediately know if the defective product is increasing, or if a certain segment of the production process is producing a defective product.
Traceability of work-in-process and semi-finished products can also be easily seen on site. In a good graphite machining factory, each part has a card or a document to follow the flow, indicating the source, the personnel processed, the equipment used, etc., and the problems can be easily traced back to the source in any process. It is also easy to improve.
The degree of protection of the parts to the parts can be judged by the workers to judge the fineness of the quality management. By observing the quantity and proportion of defective products, it is also possible to preliminarily judge whether a quality control process of a factory is qualified.
6. Visualization
Visual management is the basis of many advanced management methods, and is an intuitive communication of the management level of a graphite machining and production enterprise. Visual tools are everywhere in well-managed graphite machining plants. Including workplace organization and standardization, visualization of results indicators, standard work visualization, visualization of control indicators, automatic error prevention and correction, visual alerting, and alarm mechanisms. When visiting, you should pay attention to finding various visual tools.
Visual management dashboards can be divided into static and dynamic management boards. The static boards is mainly to convey the long-term management philosophy of the organization. The dynamic boards is the management information that the manager should grasp at any time, and it can reflect the management level and ability of a graphite machining factory.
5S is the embodiment of on-site organization and standardization, and is the underlying application of visualization. However, for various reasons, most of the graphite machining enterprises in reality have entered the misunderstanding of the surface in 5S management.
7. Tool device status
In a good factory, the equipment is neat and well maintained, and equipment-related information is clearly visible and up-to-date.
In the machining workshop of a good factory, although the various lathes are not very advanced, even the history is very long, but they all operate in good condition. I saw a card on the side of each machine that was strikingly marked with the model number, purchase date, price, supplier, maintenance record, maintenance record, and so on. In addition, the daily checklist is also recorded completely, and some checklists clearly record the hidden dangers discovered by the operator, as well as the signature and treatment plan of the equipment department. This shows that equipment management and maintenance form a benign system.
At the graphite machining plant, employees can also be informed whether operators and product developers are involved in equipment purchasing decisions. Frontline workers and those involved in product development and production are most aware of the strengths and weaknesses of new equipment and the most understandable needs of the production line. In many factory equipment purchases are determined by the high-level or equipment department, and few front-line personnel are consulted, resulting in a large number of follow-up problems.
8. On-site observation precautions
On-site observation is the most direct means of finding problems. Most of the problems will be manifested on the spot. It can quickly make a preliminary assessment of the graphite machining factory, which can trace the source and reduce the blindness of many jobs. This article explores only a small part of the scene to observe a lot of content, there are many ways and different points of view on the scene observation, but the basic principles and matters needing attention are consistent.
First, you can’t look at the scene with colored glasses. You can’t bring conclusions to the scene to find evidence. This tends to be biased.
Second, the scene can not just look at the surface, you need to check whether we are speaking, writing and doing is consistent. You need to ask a few more questions.
Third, at the same time, from a macroscopic and microscopic perspective, we use the shrinking method to focus on the details and use the way of release to see the whole.
Fourth, try not to take notes, this will affect the continuity of observations and ideas, and will also make the field staff feel nervous.
XRD Graphite has long been committed to providing customers with high-quality graphite raw materials and high-quality graphite processing products. It has established long-term cooperative relationships with many well-known graphite manufacturers in China. Our products cover graphite materials such as isostatic graphite, molded graphite, EDM graphite, and various graphite processed parts. Equipped with a series of advanced processing techniques and equipment, we have invited a group of experienced and skilled processing technicians to establish an efficient CAD/CAM team. XRD Graphite firmly believes that quality is the basis of survival and quality is the primary means of competition. We have never slacked on quality control, introduced and implemented 6S management through employee awareness and training, and strictly guaranteed product quality. We can process graphite processing according to customer’s requirements and process it through customer’s required specifications, technical drawings and sketches. We use our processing technology and advanced processing equipment, as well as experienced processing technicians to produce high quality graphite products for our customers. In addition, we have a well-established after-sales team to conduct after-sales tracking and after-sales service. We believe that customer feedback and suggestions will enable XRD Graphite to grow.
