Lean Manufacturing
Cutting the cost of printing
Always looking for ways to improve their efficiency, Pelican Press has been working with the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) to improve efficiency and offer customers a better service. Pelicans’ presses, finishing equipment and storage areas on the factory floor have been added to ad-hoc as the business has grown – not unusual, but not as efficient as it could have been.
Ian Crow, Pelican’s Managing Director, contacted Graham Canning at the MAS, who is able to give manufacturing businesses a free ’diagnostic day’ – reviewing all processes, talking to staff, looking at wastes (both time and resources) and compiling a report which has a summary of recommendations.
Graham explains: “Lots of the things we look at are painfully obvious, but just get overlooked in busy industrial environments. I’m able to come at a factory environment with a completely fresh set of eyes and identify lots of small improvements that add up to huge increases in productivity. With Pelican we soon realised that the machinery layout could be changed significantly so that machine operators had tools to hand much quicker and were travelling less in their work.”
From the report, a business may choose to go away and carry out the improvements themselves, or use the MAS to help them do that. Pelican was able to secure some funding for the project through Chamberlink and moved forward with Graham’s assistance. Ian Crow explains: “The whole process took about 6 weeks on and off, avoiding busy periods. Graham basically focussed on the ‘5C’s’ –
• Clearout
• Clean and Check
• Configure
• Conformity
• Custom and Practice
It’s meant that we’ve completely changed the lay out of the factory floor and made some startling improvements in productivity that we can pass onto our customers.”
September was the busiest month Pelican have ever had – yet they managed to keep 98% of production in-house rather than subbing work out to trusted print partners. Ian explains “The work with the MAS has made us far more efficient, so we are turning work around quicker than ever and we have more control over the quality processes.”
Pelican intend to move forward with the Lean Manufacturing philosophy. In January there will be a further phase of work. In the meantime, Pelican staff are also being offered the chance to get additional training through funding from the learning skills council. 10 Pelican staff are using this money to complete an NVQ L2 in Business Improvement Techniques – which should mean even better service for Pelican customers.