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Trimming off the excess
The push towards lean manufacturing is well under way across the UK in companies large and small. As its benefits become ever-more proven, company bosses are queuing up to ‘learn the lessons of lean’ and transform their production processes into a more streamlined and efficient system.
Leading the way, Jaguar cars has become the UK’s best example of a company that has focused its production processes on the elimination of waste, while driving high-quality and continuous improvement at every stage of the business. Jaguar’s Halewood plant on Merseyside last year received the industry’s prestigious JD Power gold award for European plant performance. The state-of-the-art facility – once Ford Motor Company’s lowest-rated plant in the world – is now a centre of excellence for lean manufacturing in the UK.
John Naughton, plant director at Jaguar’s Castle Bromwich site in Birmingham, says lean started as part of Ford’s look at its global operations, and is loosely based on Toyota’s production system. He tells Blue Skies: “It’s been about learning from the opposition, and looking at how a manufacturing facility can be more efficient.”
A key feature of lean at Jaguar is a standardisation of processes – making them repeatable and reproducible. “For example,” Naughton explains, “when a person comes in to perform a specific task, we need to have a process in place that enables them to do it in a standardised manner that can be picked up by another person the next day.”
Delivering ‘just in time’ is another measure implemented by Jaguar. This is about having only the exact parts needed to manufacture the particular item – and only getting them onto the shop floor as they are needed. The aim is “not to have money sitting around,” Naughton says. “You can only do one thing at a time, so you only need one part at a time. You need a good ‘just in time’ strategy in addition to a good philosophy of continuous improvement. You are looking to eliminate double-handling and having big amounts of stores on site.”
But the real key to lean is changing the company culture and the mindset of staff, Naughton says. “You have to think about encouraging people to deliver the car in the safest, cheapest, best possible manner. Empowering the workforce is the first step and the biggest challenge.”
Staff training has therefore become a major priority at Jaguar, and Naughton says that since lean was introduced in the late 1990s, the company has delivered academic programmes for employees ranging from Ordinary National Certificates to MBAs. All corporate managers have to attend a minimum three-week ‘lean learning academy’ run in-house, and there is a similar programme for supervisors.
Around 5,500 people have been put through open learning courses, Naughton continues, and another 5,000 have been put through ‘lean tool refresher courses’, “because if you are going to sustain the momentum of lean you have to keep refreshing the training and making sure the awareness is still there”.
Lean is a manufacturing-led strategy, but when introduced successfully, it should feed back into every part of the business. “At Jaguar this means that as lean processes are learned and waste is eliminated in the assembly department, for example, the engineers then need to design the car in different ways to fit in with this production, and suppliers are required to deliver parts in a different manner and so on,” Naughton explains.
And Jaguar is keen to share its knowledge and experience of lean with other companies, most recently by hosting a lean manufacturing conference for The Manufacturer magazine. The company also encourages all its suppliers to learn from their own training sessions. “We teach problem-solving and improvement techniques at special workshops and supply companies are really keen to take us up on these,” says Naughton.
Looking to the future, Naughton says the 10-year plan is about investing in people, staff training, self-audit, looking for continuous improvement and waste-elimination. But for all the success of lean on the shop floor, for the Jaguar business as a whole, the main task is to sell more cars, Naughton is not afraid to say.
“In terms of manufacturing excellence we have a good base in design and styling, but the number of cars we sell has been disappointing. So the biggest challenge is now producing cars that people want to buy.”
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