Flow racking delivery system
1st February 2016
Rudolph and Hellmann Automotive assists 1st tier Automotive manufacturer with implementation of flow racking delivery system
When a
leading 1st Tier Automotive Manufacturer had a requirement to assess the current on-site raw material delivery process within its manufacturing facility, it turned to Rudolph and Hellmann Automotive’s Operations and Development team for assistance in analysing and proposing a revised solution.
Previous to the commencement of the project – Rudolph and Hellmann Automotive managed the process of delivery of raw material for the manufacture of chassis components via a full pallet Kanban delivery system for the Manufacturer. Pallets of raw material are delivered to the relevant manufacturing cell in close proximity of the manufacturing machine. As part of the process the customer’s machining operative would then ‘split’ the separate pans of material from the pallet and individually re-load the material to the machine’s loading Shutes – which is activity that the machine operative would have to carry out contributing to inefficient machine down-time.
After reviewing the process over a 2 week period, the Rudolph and Hellmann Central Operations Support Team observed that in a typical working week the machine operative could gain up to 10% more productivity from targeted machines, if the R&HA delivery process was modified to negate the requirement for machine operatives to have to re-load the machine’s raw material on a repeated basis, thus eliminating wasted capacity.
The R&HA team proposed a revised delivery solution that eliminated this element of waste by initially managing the process of ‘splitting’ material within its own process – back to the point of where the material was stored and picked, and delivering individual pans, as opposed to full pallets of pans.
To provide a solution to allow the Kanban delivery driver to ‘feed’ the split pans to the machine directly and eliminate the requirement of more frequent deliveries, Rudolph and Hellmann Automotive proposed a bespoke designed flow-rack system which interfaced with the machines delivery chute, that would store the pans away from the factory floor surface and replenish the machine via gravity feed, thus eliminating the requirement for the machine operative to reload.
The proposed concept, when implemented in a scenario of Utopia across a number of cells within the customers factory - ultimately gives the customer up to 5 – 10% more capacity and maximising machine efficiency without adding in additional resource.
The flow rack concept has already been implemented by the customer and has already given a significant benefit to their manufacturing process, both from a perspective of ‘5s’ appearance and machine productivity.
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