Lean Thinking Project Report

Case Study: Lean Manufacturing at the Boeing Machine Fabrication

Manufacturing Business Unit (MBU)

Project Title: An Analysis of Boeings Lean Techniques

Submitted by

Fasina Sunday Oluniyi

Student ID: 15642757

Date: August 25, 2010

Contents
Section

Page(s)

Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: Nature of The Problem

Section 3: Action Plan for Transformation of Business

3-4

Section 4: Expected Outcomes

4-5

Section 5: Conclusions

4-5

References

Appendix 1

1. Introduction
The Boeing Machine Fabrication Manufacturing Business Unit (MBU)
manufactures components such as wing, landing gear and fuselage parts for
Boeing aircraft. The batch and queue techniques of MBU necessitated the

compartmentalization of its production processes into co-located functional

commonality. The volume of products which averages 22,000 part per month
required a lot of storage space, hence the factory made provision for a space
of 55,000 square feet in addition to the rented offsite space making a total of
65,000 square feet. This vast space was used to store WIP and finished
products. A typical product moves through as many as 30 station moves
from raw materials to finished product. This required investment in a variety
of heavy duty pieces of equipment to move the WIP and materials through
the production process.
The need to constantly introduce new product also required the acquisition of
large pieces of equipment and staff to support the production efforts.
Success at MBU is measured in terms of machine efficiency and utilization,
production backlog, and machine tool setup savings associated with
batching.
These activities results in a lot of production costs being incurred. In order to
reduce costs, MBU decided to implement lean manufacturing.
2. The Nature of The Problem
The manufacturing structure required substantial space for WIP and raw
materials. Factory configuration and size required WIP to move long
distances through many stations before they were turned into finished
products. In summary, the batch and queue manufacturing process was
beset with problems such as inflexibility, excessive travel and inventory, a
higher number of flow days, greater overall costs, and quality issues. To
overcome all these problems, MBU put in place a lean management system
in order to see the value stream of its products and services. The main tasks
faced by MBU are reduction of storage space currently being utilized for WIP
and finished products, product travel time and inventory of WIP/materials.
3. Action Plan for the Transformation of business
Establish a Lean Team: Boeing began its lean programme with the
establishment of a multi-functional Lean Team which began its task by
conducting a Lean Manufacturing Assessment where resources,
products and costs were analysed. This team served as the change
agent for the lean programme.
Utilize Policy Deployment through a Lean Vision: The lean
system was deployed via the use of a Lean Vision concept (Scaffede,
2002, p.7) by the team which gave the workers an overview of the
changes to be made to the existing system. The vision was
encapsulated in four key elements viz: product/process focused cells,
simplified scheduling systems, improved shop floor control and focused
organisation support structure.
Get Lean Knowledge: MBU organised Accelerated Improvement
Workshops (AIWs) to teach employees lean education to be able to
identify areas of waste and problem-solving skills needed to remove
them (Womack & Jones, 2003, p.261). This training was done regularly
about 5-10 times every month. Cross-functional training needed by
employees to be able to perform different functions within the product
cell they belong was also conducted.

Utilize Policy Deployment: MBU started its lean programme by

focusing main tasks to be accomplished in three specific work areas
namely travel, space and inventory.
Reorganize by product family: Operations were re-configured such
that equipment, people and resources for manufacturing products were
grouped into a cell. Each used a FIFO approach to schedule all
operations performed with it. The cell also contained point of use
stores stocked using the min/max system. Within each product cell, the
lean principle of visual control was used to simplify and improve the
inspection processes (Parry & Turner, 2006) leading less defects
thereby improving work quality.
Begin Kaiku: MBU embarked on radical improvement using an
approach similar to the one employed by Pratt in taking the massive
Hauni-Blohm blade grinding centers out of service (Womack & Jones,
2003, p.176). Large, immoveable, special-foundation- mounted milling
machines hitherto used in the Stow Bin production system were
replaced with smaller moveable ones requiring less installation efforts.
In the Aluminium Parts Cell, pickle fork was re-designed produced from
forged restrike aluminium instead of the block aluminium that was
previously used. This resulted in the elimination of stress treatment for
the pickle fork and less generation of aluminium scrap. Also,
Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs) were deployed to inspect the
quality of products thereby freeing up the previously used temperature
controlled space and resulting in energy savings. However, the lean
efforts encountered some obstacles which prevented the achievement
of complete process flows in the product cells. One area where the flow
had to be interrupted was in the pickle fork cell. The needed chemical
processing and painting operations could not take place within the cell
due to the inability of MBU to scale the regulatory requirements for
environmental compliance in environmentally-sensitive manufacturing
processes such as painting and coating (EPA, 2005). The Building and
Fire Code prevented the incorporation of chemical processing into the
cell structure of the Machine Fabrication Shop.
Instil a perfection mindset through performance monitoring:
The team set performance targets and milestones to be measured so
they could gauge whether lean progress was being made and/or
identify problems that needed to be solved (Bhasin, 2008, p.675).
These measures included quality (defects and cost of quality), product
cost, delivery performance, flow, inventory turns, safety, WIP, and
productivity.

4. Expected Outcomes
Though the reason given by the leadership of MBU for embarking on lean
transformation was mainly to promote cost reduction, lean techniques
adequately achieved cost reduction and more. Total cost was reduced by 20
percent. The lean operations also resulted in improved productivity (39%),
increased production flexibility (40-50%), reduction in defects, reduction in
approximately 70 percent of flows (70%) and reduction in quality cost
performance measure (51%). Flow days reduced to 25 days from 180 days
due to the redesign of pickle fork with zero scrap and rejection rates.
5

The use of cell structure and point of use stores lead to drastic reduction in
product travel by one to three miles, people travel by approximately 34,000
feet and decrease in truck and forklift use leading to reduction in energy use
and maintenance costs.
The use of JIT led to a reduction in bulk purchase of inventory and product
delivery when needed by customer. The use of CMM also freed up 8,000
square feet of temperature controlled space. In all, lean reduced MBUs
space requirements from 650,000 to 450,000 square feeta reduction of
200,000 square feet. Offsite storage space and its attendant costs were thus
eliminated. Inventory was reduced due to the elimination of bulk ordering of
materials which in turn reduced the opportunity for inventory damage or
spoilage.
However, this lean programme brought to the fore the fact that
environmentally sensitive processes may be difficult to lean. Some of the
obstacles as seen in this case study included environmental regulations,
safety regulations, and lack of necessary technology.
5. Conclusions
The use of lean vision enabled the team to keep the lean project in focus.
Due to regulatory and technological inhibitions, some aspects of the
manufacturing process still retained the batch and queue method of
production.
When implementing lean there is a need to know when to discontinue or
abandon the effort when the cost of construction or the uncertainties
associated with permitting requirements are prohibitive. This allows for a reappraisal of lean activities to determine the way forward.
However, MBU has continued to see this as temporary setbacks and has
continued to research into developing alternative technologies and processes
which fall within the purview of the lean principles of striving for continuous
improvement using Parallel Incremental Transformation Strategy PITS
(Taylor, 1999)
This case study has again proven that with a lean tool kit, the chances of
succeeding in your chosen activities will soar (Womack & Jones, 2003, p.270)
References:
Taylor, D. (1999) Parallel incremental transformation strategy: an approach
to the development of lean supply chains, International Journal of Logistics:
Research & Applications, 2 (3), pp. 305323.
Parry, G. C. & Turner, C. E.(2006) Application of lean visual process
management tools. Production Planning & Control, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 7786
Scaffede, R. (2002) What it takes to turn manufacturing lean: The experience
of Donnelly Corporation. Journal of Organizational Excellence, pp.3-16
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Bhasin, S. (2008) Lean and performance measurement. Journal of

Manufacturing Technology Management (JMTM), Vol. 19, No. 5, pp. 670-684
Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (2003) Lean Thinking. New York: Free Press,
pp.270
EPA (2005). Lean Manufacturing & the Environment. United States
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation

Appendix 1 ------ Boeing Auburn Machine Fabrication Case Study

Boeing Auburn
Machine Fabrication case study.pdf