Scribd
Upload
2 views1 page

Lean Management & VSM for Pifec Spa

Pifec Spa, an Italian metal products manufacturer, seeks to enhance its operational performance using Lean management by reviewing its mechanical machining area, which consists of four production processes. The current setup involves significant stock decoupling and requires multiple setups for different product variants, impacting efficiency. The document outlines the current production flow and poses questions for calculating minimum EPE and proposing a future state solution to improve delivery to the assembly department.

Uploaded by

Ana Hoyos
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
2 views1 page

Lean Management & VSM for Pifec Spa

Pifec Spa, an Italian metal products manufacturer, seeks to enhance its operational performance using Lean management by reviewing its mechanical machining area, which consists of four production processes. The current setup involves significant stock decoupling and requires multiple setups for different product variants, impacting efficiency. The document outlines the current production flow and poses questions for calculating minimum EPE and proposing a future state solution to improve delivery to the assembly department.

Uploaded by

Ana Hoyos
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Lean Management, Value Stream Mapping

LEAN MANUFACTURING, VSM – 4


Exercise
Pifec Spa is an Italian company leader in the metal products production. It aims at improving its operational
performances exploiting Lean approach.
In particular, Pifec Spa wants to review a critical part of its production flow: the area of mechanical
machining. It is composed of 4 production processes in series, all dedicated to metal item production and
currently all decoupled by stocks. The daily demand for the machining area is equal to 1200 items and
customer requires all the 60 product variants every day (10 shapes, 3 materials, 2 sizes).
The production process of the metal component is described below.
A warehouse decouples the machining department from the previous heat treatment department. In this
warehouse there is a stock of gross pieces ready to be machined, which covers four weeks of demand. The
heat treatment department delivers raw materials once per week. The machining department sends an order
of raw materials to the heat treatment department once a week.
The machining department itself consists in 4 stages: drilling, milling, surface finishing and testing. First,
gross pieces are processed by drilling machine, where a setup is required each time it changes the shape of
the piece to be worked on. Then, the piece is moved to the next milling stage, which is composed by an
automated work center that works on 3 shifts per day. It requires a setup every time a variant changes.
It is possible to setup one parameter at time. Being an automatic control center, it is possible to do only one
setup at the time. Once the unit is released from milling stage, it goes to the surface finishing stage, which
does setups when the material of the piece changes. After surface finishing process, the piece moves to the
last stage where it is tested. In the testing phase, a setup is needed every time the size of the piece changes. If
the piece results good at the testing stage it is stored in the warehouse that decouples machining department
from the subsequent assembly department, on which the company has already done improvement
interventions following the Lean approach. The assembly department sends to the machining department a
monthly forecast and daily orders, where the machining department sends a weekly production plan to the
machining department stages and delivers once per day to the assembly department according to a daily
shipping schedule that they share with the shipping stage (that is after stage 4). Stages 1, 3 and 4 work on one
shift per day and each shift is 8 hours net. The company works 7 days a week.

Stage C/T C/O Uptime Dedicated? [Link]


Drilling 15 sec/piece 10 min 90% yes 1 shift
Milling 60 sec/piece 10 min (1 shape change) 95% yes 3 shifts
10 min (1 material change)
10 min (1 size change)
Surface finishing 18 sec/piece 6 min 95% yes 1 shift
Test 20 sec/piece 8 min 95% yes 1 shift

Q1: Calculate the minimum EPE for each stage in the current situation.

Q2: Propose a future state solution for the company, identifying minimal intervention so that the company
may be able to deliver batch of 20 units to the warehouse before the assembly department.

Operations Management
©All rigths reserved – Alberto Portioli Staudacher, Matteo Rossini

You might also like