In Brief: Associates at MEDRAD, Inc. Heilman Center near Pittsburgh, PA continue to improve performance on several fronts. Effective internal and external communications are a critical element of their lean progress.
Employees at medical device manufacturer MEDRAD®, Inc.’s Heilman Center near Pittsburgh, PA are accustomed to improvement activities on a daily basis (various awards for their high performance are noted in the box, “About MEDRAD, Inc.”). Their lean roots are deep — initial lean production training and kanban (just in time) implementation started in 2002 here. Yet they continue to look for new ways to improve in quality, cycle time, and other metrics. Ramping up their communications effectiveness (everything from A3 or problem-solving sheets to better documentation and daily meetings) is proving a significant boost to lean improvement initiatives during tough times, as reported by associates in various functions. Here’s their story:
Daily Meetings
“We started daily meetings with the assemblers and the materials department in operations in late 2008 to make a visual connection between our corporate scorecard and our Key Performance Metrics in the plant. The topics are Safety, Quality, Productivity, Human Development, Cost, and Continuous Improvement (CI),” said Lori Smith-Sakalousky, production manager at the Heilman EEM facility. “Teams have a 15- or 20-minute standing meeting every day. They review the metrics at the meeting board (information posted on bulletin boards) and see if they are hitting their targets or if they need to improve. If improvement is needed, assemblers will bring an A3/problem-solving sheet to the meeting to start the initiative and the search for root causes.”
Positive feedback from the employees about the data transparency and A3 (problem-solving) activities was noted. “The daily meeting works! We have better communication and it brings the department together. Also, when I am cross-training, I can use the problem-solving sheets to identify areas of improvements that are not normally seen,” said Mike Bann, assembler in the Electro-Mechanical Team (EM). “You know exactly where you are with goals, numbers, and incentive time,” added Brian Grantz, assembler, EM team member. “It gives us the information we need, like knowing about training classes and who’s attending. And most of all, it allows the team to come up with a game plan for the day.” George Papcun, quality assurance engineer, EM operations, commented, “The problem-solving sheets give the assemblers an excellent opportunity to communicate issues that they encounter to the engineers and to QA (quality assurance). These opportunities may have been missed if the assembler would have had to come and look for us to communicate the information in person.”
“Our assemblers are our experts, so we try to reach out to them. In the past year, we had to redeploy headcount to various areas throughout the company to address changing business needs. The daily meetings help us to communicate with the teams faster and more effectively,” said Smith-Sakalousky. “We have extended the A3/problem solving approach to our engineering and quality groups as well.”
Visual Management, Progress Reports
“We have monthly company-wide reports distributed on our e-mail system,” said Mike Kochis, plant manager. “For employees with no access to email, we print hard copies. The reports include updates on financials, productivity, employee growth, customer satisfaction, and other metrics so every employee can know how we are doing. We recognize that we have a diverse population of employees with different communication preferences, so we share information with them through the channels they prefer.”
MedTV, the plant’s plasma screen communication system, also helps to keep employees informed of current metrics. The plasmas are mounted from ceilings and walls in high-traffic areas of the plant so that employees who do not have access to email or a computer can easily stay up to speed on important messages. Employees can view information on internal job postings, employee requisitions, awards, company events, seminars, meetings, and other news in addition to performance updates. “We’ve found it to be an effective form of communication for those who aren’t at a computer or regularly accessing email,” said Smith-Sakalousky.
Smith-Sakalousky added that the company’s latest communications survey showed that MedTV is a major source of communications for employees. “The software we purchased allows us also to connect corporate messages generated at the Heilman Center Plant with the (MEDRAD) Indianola plant in the Pittsburgh area, a medical disposable manufacturing plant where employees have similar communication needs.”
Visual communication methods are used across the production floor, keeping employees in tune with each other and the needs of the plant. Employees who are not connected to computer communications are provided with “VisualWork” instructions for each step in the assembly process. The VisualWork instructions, developed by the lean implementation “MedFlow” team, are available electronically in the cell or on paper from the company’s Training and Documentation Center.
Another effective visual communication system aids in efficient parts handling on the floor. The operation’s kanban (just in time) inventory system for materials replenishment and parts kitting is fully color-coded to facilitate smooth material handling inside the facility. Employees use this color coding system to quickly identify potential parts shortages.
Improving Information Quality
Getting and sharing accurate data is essential to better communications and improvement throughout the facility. Project (kaizen) teams have tackled related issues, noted Matt Boyle, plant quality manager. “In one device history improvement program, we looked at our traveler — documentation demonstrating product was built to specifications,” Boyle said. “It is a multistep review process with signoff. We found a number of specific opportunities to reduce inconsistencies within our process. Personnel from production, quality, and plant engineering worked to do this.” The DHR (Device History Record) improvement team received the 2007 President’s Team Gold award (an award handed out internally at MEDRAD), for its success. The President's Team Awards are internal to MEDRAD and given to teams that demonstrate best practices to the organization.
By focusing on technology, process and individual accountability, and by utilizing Six Sigma, the MEDRAD document quality project team originally aimed to reduce what they called in-process errors from 30 percent to 5 percent. “We worked in three phases,” said Boyle. “It took eight months to get to 5 percent and several more months to get to 1 percent. A lot of our CI focus has been from folks on the floor, ‘incentivizing’ them to create consistently correct paperwork. In the past, people thought of quality as product quality and not as document quality. We are continuing with our quality improvement activities.”
Incentives for data accuracy helped to boost improvements. Improvements can net teams up to two hours of incentive time off, usually on the first full Friday of each month, said Smith-Sakalousky. “We can take those two hours and break them into increments tied to associates’ metrics, including reductions in documentation error rates.” Team members can check their team meeting board for posted improvement results. If there are errors, problemsolving sheets will be used to eliminate issues.
Better Communication with Suppliers
The switch to a demand-pull replenishment system with suppliers — providing suppliers information on demand and min/max inventory level requirements — is another communications strategy that has resulted in significant performance gains for MEDRAD. “Within six months, we can tie a 15-20 percent reduction in inventory levels to this implementation with a supplier,” said Oda Bolden, plant material manager. “We saw a similar program at another supplier when we were benchmarking ways to improve supplier kanbans. We’re not afraid to try something new and fail. So after seeing this program used at another company, with very favorable results, we met with several of our suppliers and submitted the program to them. So far, every supplier we have approached has participated. We now have 19 suppliers in the program, representing more than 50 percent of annual material spend.
“Prior to Demand Pull, MEDRAD used the standard MRP (material requirements planning) process of periodically generating supplier purchase orders,” Bolden said. “Replacing discrete POs with live SAP reporting to suppliers and only focusing on delivery exceptions has assisted the entire supply chain with optimizing resources, managing fluctuations, significantly lower inventory, and consistently maintaining our on-time shipment to supplier requests above 98 percent over the last five years.”
Share Learnings, Involve Others
Asked about “lessons learned” as MEDRAD associates continued their lean journey, Mike Kochis suggested:
- Involve others in decision-making. Daily team meetings and other communications play a key role in making better decisions and implementing change.
- Celebrate successes and also failures. Sharing team lunches or coffee and cake helps recognize our employee’s efforts and helps to engage them in change initiatives.
- Don’t be afraid to try something new (think it out ahead of time); you learn from mistakes.
More suggestions for others implementing lean were shared by Doug Wilson, plant engineering manager:
- ”Don’t follow a lean recipe with a cookie cutter approach,” he said. “We’ve learned to apply tools, but some tools have no relevance for our operation.”
- Be selective on adding new metrics. “Here we track the success of our lean program as reflected in the business metrics we already have,” said Wilson. “For example, in kaizen events, we don’t measure them or ideas generated during these events, and we get the business results we try to achieve.”
What’s Next
Lean and CI initiatives have helped enable the company to deliver on profitability targets in tough times. Now that the medical equipment business is starting to pick up, Kochis said the company is “cautiously optimistic” about the future. In any case, lean improvements will continue to drive progress at the Heilman Center facility, he said.
Lean implementation on the shop floor provides a solid foundation for extending lean throughout all administrative functions such as procurement, said Oda Bolden. “The culture is ready for it; we’ve been on the lean journey for a number of years, and we have a roadmap for lean success,” he said.
Bolden added that the company is implementing more cross-training on the production floor and within the support functions. “We also have a major emphasis on safety. We are in the second year of the DuPont “STOP”TM (Safety Training observation Program) program,” Bolden said. The first year of the program, managers and supervisors were trained in safety audits and steps to make safety part of every job. Now the program is being extended plantwide. Added improvement strategies include:
- Although the plant’s time-to-market performance has improved by involving production personnel in product development early in the process and by using DFMA (design for manufacturing) to make sure what is being designed can be produced, related initiatives continue. A dedicated new product development space at the plant helps integrate new products into the manufacturing process.
- A learning management system is being developed to track and execute training requirements by job functions.
Editor’s note: The assistance of Lea A.P. Tonkin in the development of this article is appreciated.
S.S (Cheri) Cherukuri, CPIM, president of Cherukuri & Associates, is a lifetime member of AME, has served as AME vice president-marketing and as president for the Mid-Atlantic region, and is the AME Mid-Atlantic region finance director. He was a director of total quality at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and also general consultant/account executive at the corporate Productivity and Quality Center. The author of several articles for APICS and in Target magazine, he is a member of the Target editorial board.
