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Medical Manufacturer Eliminates Waste, Increases Productivity 100%

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Benefits to Customer:
  • Productivity doubles
  • Payroll costs decrease
  • Quality increases
  • Work area clean & ergonomically safe

Situation
With lean practices a priority a New Jersey medical manufacturer needed to eliminate
waste in one of their primary product lines. To meet customer demand the cervical
collar operation assembles and distributes approximately 800 cervical collar packages
a day. The manufacturer was looking to increase productivity and reduce the space
requirements for their cervical collar operation.

Solution
The existing operation used traditional flat tables to assemble the cervical collars. Each
assembler was responsible for finding and retrieving materials. The flat tables took up
too much space and were often cluttered and the assemblers were spending too much
time locating and retrieving materials.

To establish a Lean environment the assembly area operation was completely
revamped.

An assembly line operation was set up using Flow Cell workstations. Each flow cell is
custom figured for the job at hand with all materials contained within the workstation.
All materials are ergonomically available to the assembler improving safety and pick
rates.

Results
Since implementing the Flow Cell workstations cycle time has improved dramatically –
doubling productivity. Non productive time has been eliminated since assemblers are
not interrupted by the need to find and retrieve materials. Work progresses smoothly
from one work station to the next. All materials are ergonomically available to the
assembler (within arms reach) improving safety and eliminating clutter. This increase
in productivity has enabled the medical manufacturer to complete the same amount
of work for this operation with five fewer assemblers.

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