Lean Manufacturing and SAP

7/29/2019 Lean Manufacturing and SAP

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Prometheus GroupS A P S O F T W A R E S I M P L I F I E D

Optimize YourOperations with LeanManufacturing and SAP

Improving Operational

Efficiency Through Lean

Manufacturing with

Prometheus Group

and SAP Solutions


2/6Optimize Your Operations with Lean Manufacturing and SAP: 2

Prometheus

Overview

Did you know that your maintenance organization could be wasting nearly 25 percent

of its available labor1

? Moreover, it is estimated that up to 60 percent of wasted laborresults from activities that add no value to the overall plant performance, according to

the Reliability Institute. In todays economic climate, waste is not an option, which is

why many organizations are adopting lean manufacturing principles.

In its simplest terms, lean manufacturing eliminates waste and identifies processes

for optimizing manufacturing operations. This paper will cover key principles of lean

manufacturing and how Prometheus Groups solutions support lean initiatives. By

leveraging SAP tools and methodologies, in tandem with Prometheus Groups lean

manufacturing solutions, your organization can increase the visibility of manufacturing

operations and improve the efficiency of your manufacturing output.

Lean Manufacturing Challenges

The biggest hurdle to getting started with lean manufacturing is identifying the various

types of waste and non-value-added activities within your organization. Waste is

anything that doesnt add value, such as outdated processes or carrying excess

inventories (parts, materials, or equipment). Reactive work and underutilized labor are

also examples of waste, such as when an employee has 20 minutes of work and then

15 minutes of downtime waiting for the equipment to be available.

Consider the following time-wasting scenarios: Under-production performing plant maintenance (PM) activities too often

or not having maintenance synchronized with production negatively impacts

equipment uptime. When a component or part has to be reprocessed, usually

for quality issues, the job is getting done twice from both a time and a parts/

materials perspective.

Waiting lacking the proper processes and workflows for optimized planning

and scheduling. Its a waste of time and money when a part, component, or

permit is not ready or available for a job.

Transportation having crafts travel to get necessary tools or materials that

should be at the work site or, similarly, delivering an unfinished product from

Point A to Point B. The employee cannot work on (add value to) a productwithout the proper tools or materials in hand, and an unfinished product does

not gain any value while it is in transit. Another example: If an employee has to

walk across the production floor to pick up a printout of a work order and then

walk back to the work bench, no value is being added by the additional travel.

Strive to keep travel time to less than 15 percent per day.

Process lacking a proper maintenance plan or having low wrench time

1. Reliability Institute: http://www.reliability.com/industry/articles/article103_guest.pdf



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efficiency. Maintenance plans that have been in place for a while may include

redundancies that are using up valuable time. Every business is different,

but the typical average for actual work wrench time performance is between

25 and 35 percent, with top companies performing in the 50 to 60 percentrange. Consider a technician throughout an average day. In an 8-hour shift,

this equals 2.4 hours of wrench time and 5.6 hours spent on indirect activities

(figure 1).

Inventory lacking visibility into stock across multiple locations, having secret

material stashes, and carrying obsolete inventory stock. A lot of inventory

on hand or hidden away means money spent with no return on investment

and potentially a higher inventory tax. Also, you lose money when the items

become obsolete and cant be returned or used.

Motion performing tasks that arent required or dont add to the production

value. If you can get 500 employees to reduce avoidable motion (unnecessary

movement) by a minute a day, it translates to 8.3 man hours a day. Defects repeatedly doing repair work on the same equipment. The time an

employee uses to correct errors is time not being spent on new work.

By identifying your companys manufacturing weaknesses youre then able to make

the necessary corrections.

Benefits of Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing focuses on improving worthwhile activities by showing you how

to identify inefficient processes and streamline workflow to remove high-speed and

high-stress periods.

Figure 1



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The most common first step for implementing lean manufacturing in any organization

is to evaluate the process using 5S, which uses these five basic principles:

Sort dividing parts and processes into necessary, useless, and out-datedcategories, and then addressing each part and process as needed.

Set putting tools in the right place. For example, storing the tools used

most often in a place closest to where they are used, and putting the tools

back where they belong after use. Also, making improvements to the MRO

storeroom, such as organizing and labeling everything.

Shiny cleaning everything, keeping maintenance areas free of clutter, and

making this the standard optimal working condition.

Standardize creating an ongoing and regular policy of keeping the facility

clean and working optimally on a daily basis.

Sustain ingraining the four principles listed above into the organizations

culture and the mindset of all employees.

When lean manufacturing is implemented correctly, it can help you improve efficiency

on the factory floor by enabling you to maximize existing equipment and personnel

resources to their fullest. For example, by scheduling production instead of building

inventory, you can focus on smaller batch sizes, which can reduce equipment costs

and maintenance cycles.

Improved manufacturing processes can lead to streamlined work flow that has

operations moving smoothly from one step to the next and maximizing productivity.

Using lean manufacturing processes through a comprehensive solution that works

inside SAP can reduce effort and save time.

One of the most effective ways to improve plant maintenance operations is a well-

executed planning and scheduling process in SAP, which provides production

visibility to all personnel involved in the process. Developing a focused improvement

plan may include:

Improving the Bill of Material (BOM) quality

Providing visibility and coordination with production so that lockout/tagout

(LOTO) is reduced

Improving the communication of assignments to craft personnel

Ensuring materials are available

Ensuring tools are available Printing work package instructions and making them readily available

Prometheus Group Solutions

Prometheus Group solutions are lean in nature because the tools work inside SAP,

which means there is no need to purchase or maintain additional hardware or

When lean manufacturing

is implemented correctly,

it can help you improve

efficiency on the factory

floor by enabling you

to maximize existing

equipment and personnel

resources to their fullest.



Prometheus

interfaces. Furthermore, because all data is inside SAP, updates are made in real

time eliminating the need to duplicate work. Customers can achieve their return on

investment (ROI) within one year. For example, customers can see the opportunity to

increase wrench time 30 to 60 minutes per day per craftsperson with the tool2

. Thiscould amount to an annual recurring savings of $660,000 per year as a result of a 6

percent wrench time improvement.

In particular, the Plant Maintenance (PM) Advanced solution takes SAP to the

next level by providing greater visibility into planning and scheduling. This allows

craftsmen to be scheduled at maximum capacity, improves communication among all

teams, and cuts down on non-value-added activities. For example, OneSteel Steel

& Recycling (Click here), was able to eliminate menial activities such as manually

updating spreadsheets with multiple tools to schedule work. Once Prometheus

Groups PM Advanced was implemented, users cited that the Work Order Mass

Change functionality saved 20 minutes per work order, versus manually changingeach order. PM Advanced frees up wasted time so that planners and schedulers can

focus on managing commitment dates to production and reducing reactive time, build

accurate BOMs to better manage inventory, and implement effective programs to

improve wrench time.

Given that excess inventory can be a huge roadblock for having lean operations, it is

crucial that your organization has better visibility of in-house inventory across plants.

This enables users to reallocate materials and tools from past work orders to future

work orders. The Material Shopping Cart feature of PM Advanced streamlines the

work order component ordering process in SAP by allowing users to retrieve SAP

material master numbers through an advanced multi-word, any-order search. Thebenefits of this feature are significant, including allowing users to search long text to

find parts required for a repair, limiting the occurrence of free text input. And with all

departments using the same real-time tool, users can quickly and easily schedule

jobs and coordinate with production to minimize downtime.

With efficient coordination of available materials, tools, and resources, an

organization can improve workflow and save time and money. For example,

Company A was able to improve its initial situation of 30 percent reactive

maintenance to 24 percent, as well as reduce free text spending to 10 percent by

using the Material Shopping Cart. This helped Company A realize a total savings in

MRO of $691,2002.

Even the seemingly basic task of printing can present challenges for lean manufacturing.

Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd (Click here) implemented the PM Advanced solution for printing

and discovered how it simplified SAP planning and scheduling, as well as eliminated

duplicate planning work. By using Prometheus Print Manager, just one part of PM

Advanced, the company expected to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in just one

year. The company now plans and schedules better than it had in the past all inside SAP.

2. Please note that individual company results may vary based on individual processes and practices
http://www.prometheusgroup.com/collateral/OneSteel.pdfhttp://www.prometheusgroup.com/collateral/OneSteel.pdfhttp://www.prometheusgroup.com/collateral/Ballance.pdfhttp://www.prometheusgroup.com/collateral/Ballance.pdfhttp://www.prometheusgroup.com/collateral/OneSteel.pdf



Prometheus

Prometheus Groups software tools can reduce the time you spend on planning and

scheduling, provide visibility throughout your processes across all functions, and

improve the quality of the processes. These improvements can promote higher useradoption and usage of SAP. With the utilization of SAP and increased monitoring

and review of processes, data quality also improves. Overall, the application and its

benefits enable safer and more efficient work execution and a cost savings for your

business.

Conclusion

Your organization might have run lean in the beginning when it was small and had the

right-sized equipment and a production stream that was able to address value-added

activities. But, then as it grew, waste might have entered in the forms of overwhelmedwork areas, unexpected equipment downtime, and start and stop projects that

resulted in excess inventory.

Inefficient maintenance practices are costly to your factory and unscheduled

breakdowns negatively affect your companys bottom line. It is worthwhile to investigate

what lean manufacturing can do for your organization to improve your ROI.

Companies need effective lean manufacturing to be, and remain, competitive.

Lean manufacturing requires reliable machinery, as well as a large percentage of

employees committed to learning, implementing, and maintaining an environment that

minimizes waste and removes inefficiency.

Take advantage of improving your operational processes and workflows, as well as

increase company profitability, by using SAP and Prometheus Group solutions to get

back to a lean culture.

About Prometheus GroupPrometheus Group is an enterprise application software company specializing in

improving the usability and user adoption of SAP plant maintenance. Developed

jointly with end users, our software enhances the customer experience with intuitive

functionality, graphical visualization, and simple processes. Our certified solutions

live inside of SAP and enable companies to increase productivity, reduce costs and

improve reporting. For more information, visit www.prometheusgroup.com.
http://www.prometheusgroup.com./http://www.prometheusgroup.com./

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Lean Manufacturing and SAP