By R. BROCK PRONKO

Regional Business Analyst

“Lean operations” and “six sigma” strategies are proven methods for reducing waste and increasing efficiency in manufacturing and production processes.  The anemic economic recovery has caused many companies that were not early adopters to take a new look at these tools for making their operations run more efficiently.

The Manufacturer & Business Association, with offices in Erie, Williamsport and Harrisburg, is a not-for-profit employers association. MBA has offered its Lean Operations Champion Program and its Six Sigma Green Belt Program to members in the northwest part of the state for the past seven years.

The initial session of the three-course programs will be offered next on April 25 and 26 at MBA’s Erie office. For the first time, MBA’s Central Pennsylvania Division will offer the programs at its Williamsport office in late summer/early fall. Dates and times TBA.

Lean operations originated in the automotive industry, particularly at Toyota. It considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. These non-value added activities are known as the “Seven Wastes”: Extra motion, overproduction, unnecessary movement, waiting, inventory, rework and transport.

Six sigma was originally developed by Motorola to improve the quality of manufacturing and production processes by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in those processes. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966 percent of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million).

“We like to describe these tools more broadly by using a football field analogy,” said John Krahe, vice president of the Manufacturer & Business Association.

“If you look at a 100-yard football field and let that represent the process you’re analyzing, with lean operations you’re digging about 2 yards deep in each step of the process to figure out where there’s either duplication or bottlenecks along the entire field,” said Krahe.

“Conversely, with the six sigma program, you take that same 100-yard field and look at only one step of the process about 2 yards wide but go a hundred yards deep until you find a deviation or error.”

MBA schedules several weeks in between each training sessions so participants have time to apply the tools they’ve learned in class to the real world situations at their companies. They return to share their experiences with the instructor and fellow students before going on to learning the next set of tools.

“We typically work with very bright folks who are interested in learning the tools and applying them as quickly as possible to their operations,” said Krahe.

One of those “bright folks” is Steve Smith, who took both programs in the summer and fall of last year. Smith is plant manager at ConAgra Foods in Milton, Northumberland County.

ConAgra’s Milton plant has more than 850 employees and produces Chef Boyardee products, Healthy Choice microwaveable soups, Hebrew National and Gulden’s mustards, Crunch ‘n Munch and Andy Capp Snack Fries. The plant is ConAgra’s largest cannery and is the fourth largest cannery in North America.

Smith and his efficiency teams have applied three different methodologies at the Milton plant – lean operations, six sigma and total productive maintenance (TPM).

“We’ve deployed a series of lean tools at the plant such as ‘5S,’ which is a systematic approach to organizing the workplace to make standard operations very visual so that they’re obvious at a glance,” said Smith.

“For example, if there are tools or parts required for a job, they may have color coded labels and ‘shadow boards’ so that a worker immediately knows if the tools and parts he needs are there, and it also makes it more obvious to workers responsible for replenishing those parts.

“We also use another lean methodology called “kanban,” which minimizes the amount of working capital in the plant’s operation by making sure that there are only enough components and working materials in the plant to satisfy the next production step rather than stockpiling inventories.”

A third methodology, which the MBA programs don’t address directly, is total productive maintenance, which is not focused on process flow but on eliminating equipment breakdowns.

“We’re a year into our TPM culture change effort, and we’ve done quite well,” said Smith. “We have three model pieces of equipment where we’ve successfully reduced minor stops and breakdowns by more than 75 percent.

“The overall purpose of all these ‘tools’ is to eliminate waste and increase profitability,” said Smith.

Although most commonly used by manufacturers, lean strategies can be applied to a variety of business sectors. For example, in the lean program that Smith participated in, there were a number of insurance companies represented.

Each MBA program costs $950, which includes three classes, a manual and access to the instructors between sessions and after the sessions are completed.