Management of Change Part 1 – Lessons Learned:

Laser Cutting Metal

The Idea

One day, an engineer in a manufacturing facility was considering the amount of manual work involved in one of their sheet metal operations.  The original process involved using a mechanical shear, followed by deburring using a pneumatic handheld belt sander.  The piece was formed with press brakes and welded to produce the end product.  Operators spent a great deal of time deburring the edge of the sheared piece, and scrap from the process was high.  The engineer had a bright idea to invest in programmable laser sheet metal cutting equipment that auto-fed the sheet metal stock to improve productivity and eliminate the deburring step, reducing the amount of manual handling. 

Execution: The Good and the Bad

The company invested in the equipment and certainly did see an increase in productivity and decrease in scrap.  However, a short time later they began receiving complaints and reports of laceration injuries from their customers.  The customer employees were suffering laceration injuries while handling the parts following the process change.  Some customers froze their orders, returned the parts and demanded an investigation and resolution. 

What Went Wrong

Upon investigation, the company discovered that the laser cutting process produced extremely sharp edges on the top and bottom of the sheet metal.  The solution was to add a new machine, a rotary sander and deburrer to reduce the sharp edges from every piece of laser cut metal prior to forming. 

Additional Issues

Following the change to a laser cutter and rotary sander and deburring machine, they also discovered that the new processes increased noise and vibration hazards to a larger portion of the manufacturing floor.  Further, the scrap produced by the new cutting process was more difficult to handle than it was prior to the change and required additional handling.  Additionally, routine cleaning and maintenance of the equipment required someone to climb inside the machine, creating additional safety concerns relating to access, LOTO and working in a confined space, which were not fully thought out before implementation. 

Analysis

Was the project successful in the end?  Ultimately it was successful, the company did increase productivity, improved quality of the end product, reduced variation and ultimately did reduce scrap.  However, these gains came at a cost.  The change in process resulted in a product safety issue that damaged customer relations, required additional capital expenditure, and caused production delays.   Further, there were additional costs and safety risks that were not considered. 

Lessons Learned

In this example, the company did not manage the change in their processes effectively.  Management of Change is a systematic way to handle changes within an organization to effectively deal with the change and to capitalize on possible opportunities.  This process involves adapting to the change, controlling the change and effecting new change.  Join us next week to dive deeper into Management of Change and how to  make the process work for you!