AMAZING SECRETS TO HELP WOOD FAMOUS FACILITIES INCREASES  PRODUCTIVITY IN SHORT TIME

Lean Manufacturing is a phrase that OPEX often mentioned when talking about our work, how to help businesses improve and increase productivity quickly. However, to give you a better idea of ​​its effectiveness, follow the story below.

The story is that since 2011, OPEX has a close friend who is the stepchild of PH Furniture factory owner – a wood factory, a family company. He is the second generation CEO of the company and has just returned from studying in Australia to take over the family business.

Taking full advantage of the English advantage and knowledge gained during his study, this CEO quickly negotiated many domestic – exterior orders from the world’s leading retail chains such as IKEA, Walmart. It can be said that this is a great success of a traditional enterprise in the country. If successful with these orders, the opportunity to grow and bring the name of the company abroad is extremely large. So far, PH Furniture has mainly exported small orders to US stores.

Larger orders, higher requirements

Collaboration with large companies is no easy task. It does not stop at a few closed-ended meetings but also to ensure the quality of each ex-factory order with these foreign units.

The specialty of orders from these global chains is that the quantity on each order is huge, at least 100,000 products per PO. Requirements on schedule and quality are also much higher than other retail customers, the profit margin is also lower. At the same time, the pressure to synchronize the management system from order management to quality management, employing full-age labor, safe production.

In the natural furniture industry, the price of raw materials is mainly imported wood accounting for 60-70% of the product cost. Imported timber is cut into long slices and left to dry outside for about 1 month, then through a kiln by steam to achieve the required dryness. This is the longest step in the entire production chain, and also the most prone to failure if the moisture reduction too quickly or unevenly will lead to cracking or warping.

You know, inherently wood is a natural product, with eyes and errors at random points, need to go through preliminary processing to filter out the bars and then refined to make interior details. There are many losses in primary processing.

At the moment, the problem is that the refining stage uses many automatic and semi-automatic machines, the time to convert from one code to another is also very long, maybe up to 4 hours. It usually takes up to 4 hours to adjust, and a series of semi-finished products that fail during the alignment process will result in the worker wanting to do the series, finishing all the details before switching to another. This results in piles of unfinished semi-finished goods, and assembly and waiting for synchronization to assemble the final product.

As for assembly, they are allowed to assign products to workers’ groups. If they do not have enough assembly details, they can hardly keep good workers. Because of product contracts, the teams work very hard, can come late or work late into the night in the peak season as long as the job is finished. However, product contracts also face problems with quality assurance as well as labor discipline

If not done well, how can we confidently receive larger orders later and most likely become a minus point affecting the company’s reputation because of poor quality and delayed delivery. The question now is how to improve the process and increase the fastest productivity in a short time for PH Furniture.

Embarking on improvement, what has OPEX done?
At the time of being invited for business support, OPEX quickly identified problems to be solved to help the factory better. If these problems cannot be solved, it will be difficult for Vietnamese enterprises to stand firm on the international arena. Problems to be addressed at this time include:

1. Building management system for generation transfer:
   This is the decades-long effort of the director’s uncle, who has gone through many hardships and ups and downs from the newly opened subsidy period to economic integration. If they still manage the old way, the son and uncle will never take over because they have to work very hard and the factory is in a small town. Production management is also very complicated because each factory has more than 400 workers, which has managed many employees, many problems arise.

2. The challenge of young CEO:
Most workers also work for the organization not simply for pay or habit but also for their parents and the previous generation to manage the factory. It is the emotional part that makes them stick with the factory after many ups and downs.

Now, when announcing the second generation, OPEX’ s friend will replace the old person, it may be hard to accept at first. The young CEO must convince an experienced senior team to follow a veteran war veteran to start improving. At the same time, building a young and competent young team and combining the two development teams.

3. Large orders are even more flexible

It sounds ridiculous because why are there orders that we should be happy to worry about? However, for a factory still familiar with the old way of working, this will be extremely difficult for both management and employees.

The challenge of the whole factory is that when there are large orders, fast delivery rate is required, how to deploy those orders effectively, minimize errors or delays because they will be punished severely. And when you do well the orders for these big brands, you never have to worry about output.

As soon as he realized what to overcome, OPEX quickly sat down with his CEO and thought seriously about the solution. All solutions return two lean words – lean manufacturing. Only lean can help businesses survive the “storm” of these changes without affecting the production situation.

Only about 3 weeks of analysis, evaluation and planning, and about 1 year of implementation have produced amazing results after applying the solution consulted by OPEX.

The inevitable results from methodical method:

After 1 year of directly participating in consulting and solving each problem of the business, OPEX has produced proud results:
– Help the two generations solve problems in production systematically and effectively. This is especially important because the harmony of two ideas, two generations is not simple. Because the former has been successful with their approach, persuading them to take a new approach without committing to a more advanced result or certain performance they will not follow. It’s good that with Lean, everything can be solved and see the results when done.

– Help young CEOs have a better grasp of the profession and show their ability to lead an experienced and creative team eager to reach the sea. Creating trust in the organization, the previous generation can trust this young man to be able to carry and lead the business. Creating affection is more important than ever in the established businesses like PH Furniture.

– Create direct results that reduce production costs, increase quality productivity:
+ Shorten drying time by 20%, saving 15% of energy for drying, reducing 70% of cracks, warping and warping during drying.
+ Reduce 7% loss in preliminary processing.
+ 20% increase in refining and assembly capacity.
+ Reduce over 70% of errors in the manufacturing process.

With these changes, the company has established itself as the leading furniture exporter in the province and the central region. Expanding into the whole segment of import, distribution of raw wood, production of wooden exterior and interior as well as preparations from wood sawdust to make pellets for furnace export.

Lessons from Lean:

To be able to solve many problems at the same time from family issues, conflicts in the company and production process bottlenecks, it requires a well-planned plan and knows how to cleverly apply lean in both thinking and production processes export.

When you understand the key issues and the value of this method, you will know how to explain, persuade, train and improve the skills of the management team and workers in the province. Help them do more meaningful and valuable work than waiting for the machine to run, or rub defective paint to repaint.

Finally, as soon as we find out what is the biggest bottleneck of the business and solve it well, improving 20% ​​of 80% will be easier and more effective than improving 50% of 10%. Thus, we can sum up what the Lean method in this case helped: Reduce costs, flexibly respond to market changes, streamlined thinking, increase quality, sustainable production.

Thanks to these changes, OPEXs friend easily accepted and had time for the traditional factory to have a reasonable transfer. OPEX knows, this is the story of many factories operating under the old method in Vietnam encountered and not everyone can say the fix is fixed right away.

More than 10 years of experience, OPEX and his colleagues after many new projects can confidently assert themselves to be able to do it after many “battles” and “absorb” the difficulties of each business operating in the traditional style.

Hopefully the above example can help you better understand the value that lean brings to the organization. Those are real numbers and you can see them on a monthly and quarterly basis rather than as empty words or virtual promises.

OPEX – Operational Excellence Your Business