Day Two - Katie Anderson's Japan Study Trip (Part 2)
We also visited Isuzu today, another Toyota supplier. Isuzu Steel processes and sells cold-rolled Steel. Due to additional production operations, such as cold drawing, turning, grinding, and polishing, cold-rolled Steel is smoother and more expensive than hot-rolled Steel. Isuzu produces thin steel sheets for the automotive industry, primarily Toyota.
Isuzu's factory was a model of operational excellence using the lean practices of Kanban, Kaizen, QC Circles, and Hoshin Kanri. Isuzu takes large steel coils from the mill, slits them down, turn them into flat sheet stock and coils, and then sells them to secondary suppliers making different kinds of parts for Toyota. They show the employees finished parts in the training areas and also defects. We saw this with all the suppliers this week as well. Whenever possible, they visualized. As they built in order, they used magnetic "kanban" tags on the coils for the inventory. Cranes are used to offload and unload finished products according to shop floor orders.
A world-class robotic SMED was one of the most amazing things we saw at Isuzu. A Single-Minute Exchange of Dies reduces equipment changeover times. SMED saves time and quickly changes to the following product; SMED attempts to complete as many steps as possible while the equipment is running. Shigeo Shingo developed SMED to help companies reduce their changeover times dramatically. In lean manufacturing, the SMED system is about doing more with less while providing maximum value to the customer. Any unnecessary parts of the changeover process are identified and eliminated during SMED. In Isuzu's quick die change system, the metal slitters change about five times daily. They're constantly cutting these master coils into exact sizes for their customers, so this equipment is highly automated. They have robots that will build the die configuration and change it out on a machine in about 60 seconds. The robots prepare the new dies and insert them into the machine, and then they take out the old dies and disassemble them. It's incredible to see. Here's a video walkthrough of the factory and an actual SMED process.
Here’s a link to part 3 of day 2.
https://www.profound-deming.com/blog-1/day-two-katie-andersons-japan-study-trip-part-3
