Case study: Success through innovation and innovation at MacNaught (Part 2)

With the successes inherited from the good implementation of 5S, MacNaught Company has replicated the efficiency of the improvement model by lean manufacturing (Lean) practices.

Set in Australia’s domestic market, Macnaught relies on exports to keep most of its business, but productivity and agility in production create an uncertain work schedule. The company is a Sydney based manufacturer of hose reels, lubricants and industrial flow meters. Given the current situation, Macnaught knew that lean production was the answer they needed.

Macnaught Australia’s director, Robert Hill, said: “In the beginning, we were looking for productivity improvements. With the production scale meeting only the small domestic market, one export order is equivalent to many domestic orders within a month. We don’t have the flexibility to respond quickly to such orders, so export orders are usually received only after 10 to 12 weeks.”

“The production schedule has been altered due to the difficulty of the labor force and the inventory, we had to run out of areas on a regular basis and work a lot of overtime.”

Macnaught had to work with experts to transform the production of a product line from a whole process to batch generation, to individual jobs. Before that, the production line was capable of meeting orders at Austrailan with 4 full-time employees. However, in response to the export orders, the company had to work overtime for several weeks, which is the reason for the delays and delays in progress for domestic customers. Since implementing the lean Lean approach, domestic orders only have to wait 2 working days to execute, while export orders are managed for the following days. Currently, instead of a 12 week schedule many orders can be rotated in a matter of days.

Steve Gavin, CEO of Macnaught shares: “We have realized the results rapidly, and there is a need to implement lean production across the entire business operations of the company. Our goal is to reduce progress, deliver on-time delivery, and keep feasible costs to a minimum without mistakes.”

In the first step in the lean transition at Macnaught, conduct a corporate-wide business review, assessing opportunities for improvement across the entire corporate aspects including customer service, management and production. Set a series of goals to reduce inventory, product development and customer service cycles. Macnaught has implemented 5S, Kanban and other lean tools under the guidance of experts. Provide training for employees to create 5S champions, they will work in teams within the organization to improve business processes and productivity. 5S is an important foundation of any lean manufacturing transition because it is the first step towards standardizing workspaces.

Productivity and capacity across all product lines have been improved. Inventory of raw materials and products decreased significantly. Company employees are involved in all aspects of the business, participation in problems is allowed to solve them. The work to be done again is significantly reduced. Instead of fixing the problems on-site and wasting time, the company solved the problems radically.

“The most striking result for us is the reduced implementation progress,” said Mr. Hill. Previously, overseas customers would have to wait about 12 weeks for their orders, but now we can deliver more within 1 week. Another important thing is that we have learned lean production, Lean, 5S, and continue to improve our processes so that the improvement never ends.

Productivity and Quality Office