When was the last time someone in your organization used their training to save the company $400,000 in less than a year? The SDSU Lean Six Sigma program requires every Black Belt candidate to demonstrate a savings of $100,000 in actual cost savings to their companies. Our graduates do that and much more!

Small and medium sized companies like many found in the San Diego region are discovering what the large corporations have known for some time - the powerful potential Lean Six Sigma holds to dramatically improve the way organizations do business. Many organizations, both traditional manufacturing companies and transactional and service based organizations (including financial services, health care, hospitality and the armed forces), recognize that Lean Six Sigma is one of the most effective approaches to reducing costs and improving productivity.

A company based outside of California recently opened operations across the border in Mexico. This mid-sized electronics manufacturing company employs 60 people in Mexico to assemble Printed Circuit Boards (PCB's). The assembly process of most PCB's begins with the Surface Mount Technology (SMT) process since the components are soldered on the surface of the board (i.e. "surface mounted") rather than attached through holes on the board.

A few months before opening their Mexican operations, the company decided to send one of its high potential engineers to the SDSU CES Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification Program. After the initial weeks of coursework, this talented young engineer began his required SDSU-supervised Lean Six Sigma project. At the same time, the company was just opening operations in Mexico. Its main objectives were to have a smooth product transition and to address the main quality problems. The company did not plan, at least initially, to have large quantities of PC Boards assembled in Mexico.

After several months of operations, the company expanded its goals to include a larger production of PC Boards at the Mexico facility. Since the SMT line was running at full capacity, the company hired additional people and opened a second shift for the SMT line. Meeting production goals quickly became an issue in the SMT line. Along with having larger work orders for existing products, the company also introduced two new high-demand products to the facility: the T2 and T3 Models.

The company now required their Mexico facility to produce a significantly larger number of PC Boards without adding any additional resources. Our Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Candidate understood immediately that to meet this challenge he must start with two of the main tools in his Lean "toolkit": Single Minute Exchange of Dyes (SMED) and Line Balancing. He knew he would also use the statistics of Six Sigma to measure the "before and after-effects" of his Lean efforts.

Lean Tool #1: Single Minute Exchange of Dyes (SMED)
SMED's main objective is to reduce the time it takes to prepare a machine (the so-called "changeover time") to produce a second product after being used to make a different initial product. By reducing the time it takes to do a changeover, companies can save time and then apply that "new" time to produce more PC Boards.

At the Mexican facility, changeovers in the SMT production line involved waiting until production of one model was complete before starting the changeover process. A SMED analysis revealed that some of the changeover activities could be done while the production line was still running, saving time that could then be used to create more boards.

By applying SMED to the SMT production line, our candidate and his team reduced the changeover time from 29 Minutes to 11 Minutes - a 62% Reduction.

Lean Tool #2: Line Balancing
Line Balancing is a technique which helps identify how the work load required of different equipment can slow down production processes. Once these "bottlenecks" are recognized, line balancing equalizes the workload between machines so each machine operates more efficiently, in this case, to produce more PC Boards.

Soon after opening the Mexico facility, the company introduced two new products there: the T2 Model and the T3 Model. These new models rapidly became those in the highest demand. Since the SMT line already had a problem meeting production goals, the company needed to do something to increase production immediately. Our candidate and his team discovered that a particular machine, "The Topaz", was causing a bottleneck in the SMT line. After identifying the bottleneck, their next step was to balance the workload between Topaz and a second machine doing similar production work. The team accomplished this goal by giving the second machine, "the Emerald", more mounts upon which to solder the boards and programming the order of the mounts, so the machine could operate more efficiently. After several trial and error runs, the team successfully balanced both machines.

By applying the Line Balancing tool, the T2 Model's production capacity increased from 42 boards/hour to 54 boards/hour. In the T3 Model, production capacity grew from 55 boards/hour to 61 boards/hour. These changes represent a 28% increase in Production Capacity in the T2 Model, and an 11% increase in Production Capacity in the T3 Model.

Of course, our Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Candidate's most pressing task was to convert these changes into dollars so he could show his company the value of their investment in his SDSU training. After completing his six sigma analysis, he found that in just three months he had created a total Accrued Savings for the company of $122, 995. He estimated the Total Year 1 expected savings from this single Lean Six Sigma Project as $396,650.

SDSU's Lean Six Sigma program teaches participants how to implement the features of both Lean and Six Sigma to help secure an organization's long-term competitive advantage. Our program combines the best practices of Six Sigma and Lean - taking the industrial engineering tools of Lean and complementing them with the science of Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma combines the speed and agility of Lean with the statistical predictability of Six Sigma to create solutions for better business practices and dramatic bottom line results.

Call us today - We'd like to feature your company as our next Lean Six Sigma success story!