| Among 100 top auto parts manufacturers all over the world, the top 4 enterprises are Germany Bosch, Japanese Denso, Germany Continental and Canada Magna ,also there are no Chinese companies. The gap between Chinese local company and international company is too great in the field for examples sales volume, research capability, self-innovation and operation etc.The foreign automotive parts manufacturers are expanding at China continuously. Their joint venture or wholly owned company's advanced core technology and outstanding operation management are favoring china automotive assembly works. While Chinese local auto parts manufacturers can only shake off the situation of decreased profit and be knocked out by the way of technology innovation and increasing operation management level since more companies are competing with the sales prices seriously.The author who is engaged in Operation Manager at American Wholly Owned Company Suoneng Changchun Automotive Interior Company were focused on improvement of production efficiency of seat assembly within one year with all the operation team since the end of 2008. This Article shows all the detail process how to increase the production efficiency of seat assembly.The article studies the seat assembly production efficiency by the way of problem solving and analysis. Firstly introduce the background of Suoneng Company and lead to the formula which was required by headquarters. This formula tell not only the method how to calculate the production efficiency but also the indicators to influence the efficiency. The formula calculated for production efficiency reflect the relationship between actual output and theoretical output, that is the comparison between actual daily produced seats volume and theoretical produced seats in certain time. With the research of production efficiency, we can conclude that the main way to increase production efficiency is to produce high quality and more volume seats within less time by fewer workers.Secondly illustrate the current situation of low seat assembly production efficiency at the end of 2008 and make an analysis on all the possible reasons which lead to low production efficiency. The analysis is made from Man, Machine, Material and Method etc deeply with each chart and data statistics which is just like an old snap picture. Man was analyzed from worker's working attitude, high resignation rate and tiredness of workers. Machine means equipments'downtime rate and usage of final test equipments. Materials mean the quality problems of incoming materials, non-on time materials feeding and materials place for storage at the assembly line. Method means temporary working instruction and mistakes by production line workers. the main reasons influencing production efficiency are finished goods racks, non-on time materials feeding, incoming materials quality problems, temporary working instructions by engineering dept , equipment downtime by maintenance dept or rework by production dept themselves etc.The article takes a long paragraph to illustrate all the detail process how to raise the production efficiency and each method's application examples. For examples to set up Lean Manufacture System, introduce the Operation Evaluation Assessment Systems so that the other company can refer to this system clearly. How to implement 5S and TPM within each groups of operation teams are mostly introduced at the paper.The most important content of lean manufacturing is to implement standardization of assembly line. But more company only set up a false standardization . They can not continue to implement standardization from the staff's heart. The only sign to implement standardization is only hang on some working instruction at the assembly line.This articles introduce clearly all the steps and methods and also pay more attention to implement standardization among all the staff daily.To set up Emergency Plan to guarantee the production efficiency increase from equipment, IT and log side. To keep the non-conformity parts not to deliver to customer is the most important at the plant. This article introduces the QRQC of assembly line and control method for supplier quality.How to judge the operation is good or not , depending on how to encourage the first line workers and shift leaders. All the activities and methods are implemented to drive all the workers and operation team members such as Team Leader Job Competition, set up each group with KAIZEN group leaders, communication between managers and staffs, new worker's relatives visit plant, monthly performance evaluations , monthly excellent practicer evaluation, My Suggestion evaluation, multi-skill and multi-positions, top projects of company, layers audit etc.Lean Six Sigma is one kind of method theory how to solve the problems. The shareholder's value can be maximize through improving customer satisfaction, decreasing cost, improve quality, speed up procedure's speed, perfect investment etc. To implement Lean Six sigma can push continue improvement of company. Lean must be connected with six sigma because six sigma theories can solve the problems from the deeper aspect and then find the root cause so that the problems can not be repeated in the future. Company's CI dept make the training for all the KAIZEN group leaders and shift leaders and supervisors for several times. The difficult six sigma theory can be trained with easy understood tools so that they can apply these methods freely.As the saying goes: Keeping is harder than winning. How to keep the production efficiency at a satisfied result must be paid enough attention. Finally the plant's production efficiency was increased smoothly. But the working load is increased along with the production efficiency's increase. That means new turns'worker tiredness will occurs again .Furthermore The most loss for production efficiency are coming from customer's unbalancing production. But customer's production planning is so bad that we don't know how to restart our production if the customer shut down the line. All the workers have to stop the production to wait for restarting because we are JIT delivery to our customer. This loss is uncontrolled and difficult for solving the problems from customers. This will lead big barrels to operation managements. At the last the article illustrates how to set up continues improvement systems. The methods for examples Rationalization Proposal , Plant Level Top Projects and Six Sigma Green Belt Training System are introduced. All the articles can provide a practical references for Chinese local auto parts manufacturers'operations managements. |
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