A southern Alberta fabrication company makes the move to lean and doesn’t look back.
Plains Fabrication & Supply had a problem. Part of its Calgary facility was built in the 1930s and the brass knew that they’d have to move eventually. But they wanted to take their time and ensure that the future facility was just right. That meant revisiting some of the practices in place at the current shop.
“Any gains we could achieve here would be good into future,” says assistant vice president of finance Adam Nagy, “and would help when it came time to design a new space.” Nagy and others decided to take a long look at how things were running.
Prior to this, company president Chester Nagy heard from a customer about a new way of thinking in business: lean. And then he heard it again from the folks at Alberta Economic Development. Intrigued, he picked up a few copies of James Womack’s Lean Thinking. Chester handed out the copies to shop and office staff, who read it over Christmas, 2004. By February the company had registered more than 25 staff members in a course on lean. It seemed a perfect fit for Plains, which fabricates steel packages for the oil and gas industry.
A steering committee including Nagy, Pagenkopf, and Diana Critchfield was set up to look at lean. They knew they needed employee buy-in, so they set up work groups, or as Womack calls them, cells. “We set up cells for each area or process, says Pagenkopf. “We tried to involve staff from the start.”
They concentrated first on one area, small vessels, and hired a consultant to come in and provide comment. “We saw really good gains from that,” Nagy says. “First we did value-stream mapping. Small vessels are production-type work that lent itself to the process.”
One of the suggestions of lean is to move the worker from station to station, rather than move the item they are working on. The famous lean example is envelope-stuffing. It’s faster and more productive to fold the paper, stuff the envelope, address it and stamp it than operate in a more traditional batch-and-queue style. Starting and finishing each job is more efficient than breaking a job down by task.
“And our items aren’t envelopes, they are fabricated vessels,” says Pagenkopf. “We need cranes to lift them. They weigh 1,000 lbs or more and it adds up quick.” The time Plains saves picking up and shifting items is time that trained staff can spend adding value for the customer rather than waiting for their next task.
“We used to work in batches of 10,” says Nagy. Now workers start and finish a vessel before moving on to the next. In real terms that means: lead time for small vessels dropped from 44 days to five; $200,000 worth of material in process any time dropped to $40,000; 100 small vessels in progress at any one time has dropped to 15; cranes that used to pick up each vessel 20 times now move it just four times.
Plains Fabrication & Supply has been working with lean practices for more than two years. They hope to roll out the practice across more of the company, including in the office. “A lot of shop floor problems start out in the office,” Nagy says ruefully.
Both men talk about the culture change that lean principles have brought. “No one gives you answers; you have to be ready to move forward,” Pagenkopf says. “Is lean the answer? Yes it is, but we have to make it fit our needs.”
