Industrial Painting

Expertise

Operational Improvement – CPI

Assignment

Our client had implemented lean manufacturing cells, but was not receiving the full benefit they hoped to achieve. A painting operation was required before the products were tagged and readied for delivery. This required sending the products to a central paint area and then back to the cell for tagging and delivery preparation. Lead time back and forth to the paint department was one week and the products suffered handling damage after painting. This resulted in 50% of the items requiring touch-up rework, a significant cost problem for our client.

Actions

MainStream helped the company form a cross functional team from engineering, marketing, manufacturing and special processes that investigated the situation and determined that a miniaturized paint booth could be constructed and placed in the cell. Working in conjunction with the management team, MainStream helped design the paint booth and the system was constructed on-site which solved the problem. Upon further investigation the team determined that water based paint would meet both customer and engineering requirements resulting in further cost savings.

Results

Work in process was reduced by 15%, lead time was reduced by one week, and material handling was reduced by the volume of products to and from central paint. The cosmetic quality of the product was improved due to the new paint process and the painting rework was eliminated.