Cellular Flow

1 day (workshop) / 5-7 day (Implementation)

Cellular Flow is perhaps one of the most shocking changes an organization will ever experience. It is about changing not only the  physical arrangement or layout of the facility, but the mindset as well. The goal of implementing Cellular Flow is to create an environment able to build various models of products at a consistent rate of production based on customer demand.

The challenge is converting from traditional manufacturing environments (especially in job shops), which are designed to build orders for each product in batches according to a schedule based on standards. It is possible to implement Cellular Flow in downstream processes while still using traditional techniques in upstream processes. All these changes will have to do with the idea of "One Piece Flow", encouraging teamwork, and cross training. In this course we will examine these aspects along with many others through hands-on exercises.

Course Description:
Cellular Flow a hands-on course that teaches participants how to get people and machines to work together as efficiently as possible to reduce lead times, minimize work-in-process, optimize floor-space usage, and improve productivity. In this workshop we will demonstrate how communication improves among the cell members when they are closer to each other, which in turn prevents errors from passing through to the next process. The idea is to reduce traveling distances of people and products between operations. It is much easier to balance the operation so that each operator gets a fair, even workload. This will help implement a reliable process to comply with the "Takt Time" of each product. We will demonstrate how implementing Work Cells will help you achieve waste reduction in terms of time, travel, and most importantly -- inventory.

Learning Objective:

Upon the completion of this workshop participants will have an understanding of: