Project Management, Business Plan Example

Understanding the Problem

General Motors has a multi-part problem when it comes to controlling the amount of labor and time it takes to prepare a work area for painting. Currently the spray booths on the assembly line require daily cleaning in order to be prepared for the next day operations.  This is caused by paint spray accumulation on the floor and walls.  The risk is that the accumulation would contaminate the next runs paint process and decrease the quality of the finished good.  In order to work through the problem it must first be understood. There are processes and methods to find the source or root cause of the problem and once that is found it will be possible to correct.  Also in this situation there has been a targeted goal of time reduction from performing the task five times per work week to once per week.  This constraint allows for the project team to set measurable objectives and also allows for the current method to be used as a benchmark in which all future progress can be measured.

The project team may need to implement multiple iterations and fixes to streamline the process and eliminate waste but each improvement will need to be monitored and controlled to ensure it is repeatable and sustainable in the process.  The tools we can use to find the core problems is using a Gemba walk and asking the Five Whys.  Instead of providing a solution to a problem that the team has never seen in person it would provide great benefit for the team to experience the problem.  This could be done by performing a Gemba walk in which the team will go and walk through the process and make the problems visible (Imai 1997).  The team will then have a better understanding of what they are viewing, how the changes they make influence the process and will also provide the scene to better answer or have the experts on the line answer the questions to the Five Whys.  The Five Whys will drive the team to the root cause of the issue and therefore provide an area that could be improved thus influence the amount of time preparing the area for painting.

Process Improvement

While the team is on the Gemba walk they will document all aspects of the process including inputs, processes and outputs.  With this data the team would drive down the Five Whys.  First, the problem needs to be stated.  The problem is the paint booth requires cleaning five times a week.  Why?  The paint accumulates on the walls and floor.  Why? The overspray reaches the floors and walls and sticks to it. Why? The paint booth is small and enclosed.  Why? There are floor limitations and space confinements. Why? Because the floor plan was built around initial assembly and the paint booth was installed last.

All of these questions could drive to a different end state but it is important to note the progression of the statements.  The point is to drive down to an issue that could benefit from a solution.  While the shop floor may not be reconfigurable until the next model change there is opportunity to make improvements to the process.  The problem is the fact that the team has to work to clean the floors and walls in order to prepare for the next assembly run.  As the team is driving the questions it was noted that the paint is obviously sticking to the walls and floor.  The team could focus on ensuring that the walls and floor do not accumulate the paint or coat the walls with a barrier that is not conducive for paint adherence.  This would facilitate clean-up process and allow the maintenance crew to clean in a faster and potentially less frequent manner.

Streamlining the Process

In addition to the coating the walls with a paint resistance coating there needs to be a way to document the process.  This would entail the creation of a standard operating procedure to facilitate an extensive and thorough cleaning and the exact functional operation including the process, tools and expected timing for the effort.  As the new process is implement it would also be noted that one variable in the problem has not been addressed.  The thick accumulation on the floor is only enhanced by the fact that the walls now are paint resistant.  While some paint still adheres to the walls most of it will make its way to the floor.  In order to solution the problem of paint sticking to the walls and floor we could eliminate one of the problem areas.  While technically we could not get rid of the floor we could use a grated or expanded metal floor to eliminate the surface area that could collect the paint.  The sub-flooring would capture the residual paint and would no longer be an issue causing quality issues.  The frequency of cleaning could be reduced to the appropriate amount in the requirements.  In this case the sub-flooring could be built to collect one week’s worth of residual paint.  The sub-floor could be cleaned at the required once per week interval.

Summary

The standard operating procedure to thoroughly clean the paint booths will facilitate reaching the goal of reducing the frequency and amount of time spent on cleaning the paint booths.  This problem had multiple parts and not one single answer would drive a solution that reduced the frequency of cleaning the booths from five times per week to once per week.  The solution became a collaboration of solutions that combined into an overall process change to reduce wasteful efforts and streamline the process.  The base line was established with the previous procedure resulted in the booth requiring cleaning five times per week.  The new documented process to clean the paint resistant walls allowed not only for a quicker cleansing process but allowed for slightly less frequency.  The walls were determined to stay cleaner throughout the process but the floor was accumulating vast quantities of paint residue.  Once the barrier to frequency was identified, i.e. the accumulation on the floor, the frequency would be able to be reduced to the requirement.

The important aspects of this process improvement project were to first understand the problem.  It is also imperative to benchmark the process to understand the improvements that are being made and how the changes to the process are impacting the end result.  The ability to fix a problem and not to mitigate a result of a problem is important to creating reliable and repeatable processes.  The problem of cleaning the paint booth five times per week was remedied by focusing on the root cause of the problem and implementing standard operations for cleaning the booths, installing paint resistant walls and eliminating the ability of the floor to collect excess paint by installing a sub-floor below the expanded flooring above.

References

Imai, Masaaki (1997). Genba kaizen: a commonsense low-cost approach to management. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional.