This Lean case study illustrates continuous flow applied to job shop assembly of display units (for a Printing and Packaging company).

BACKGROUND
This company is New Zealand's leading manufacturer of semi-permanent Point of Purchase (POP) displays, promotional materials, and consumer/industrial packaging.

They have been creating intelligent packaging solutions for over 30 years. Their continued success is due to their high level of innovation and continued investment in leading-edge technology.

When the business was started back in 1974, the market was a whole lot simpler than it is today. Then, their sole product was in the unprinted industrial corrugated board market. With new technologies being developed worldwide, they decided to stay up with the play and invested in each development as it became available. Over the last 10 years they have grown to a market leading position in Point of Purchase (POP) displays, Promotional materials, Consumer and Industrial packaging.

SITUATION
They are producing more display material than ever before and that means moving to a job shop environment where each job is different and the complexities which come with it. More over the customers have become more demanding giving short lead times which have become a challenge over the years to deliver quality products in short time frames and at the same time trying to maintain the margins.

The assembly area is the worst affected as it is highly labour intensive due to the nature of their product range. All the sub-components required for final assembly are printed, cut to the right size and shape in-house and in batch mode.

The new Operations Manager who joined a year and half ago had some previous experience with Lean methods and tried to implement "One-Piece Flow" with little success, as the staff have worked at this company for a number of years and they were highly negative and couldn't see the real benefit in the new ways of doing things.

The Operations Manager frustrated over the happenings and being a firm believer of Lean contacted Vishnu to run a pilot project on "Work Flow Management" to introduce the concepts of 5S and Single Piece Flow to get the buy-in required. This programme was arranged just before starting an urgent order which was estimated to take 6 days with 8 staff.

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