The 6M's of Manufacturing Opportunity
The 6M's of manufacturing opportunity stand for Machine, Material, Methods, Manpower, Measurement and Mother Nature. What I like about the 6M's is that they are the key input variables that define all aspects of manufacturing process variability and hence opportunities. Whether you are working on improving output, efficiency, scrap or process variability, the 6M's have you covered.
If you are working on a process improvement project and you don't know where to start, pull your team together and create a fishbone diagram using the 6M's as a starting point. Then branch out your fishbone diagram with influential process inputs in each category.
So for example, if you are working on improving efficiencies, then work with your team and brainstorm all of the machine issues that are causing inefficiencies. Then brainstorm all of the material issues that are causing inefficiencies and continue to follow this process for all 6M's. This will provide you with a full list of improvement opportunities. Below is a description of each of the 6M's and how they can influence process efficiencies. Feel the power!
- Machine: The first M is machine and I have this M broken down into three separate categories and these are (a) machine design, (b) machine reliability and (c) machine speed. (a) Machine Design: Machine design is the foundation of success when it comes to efficiency and I’ll compare your process to a racecar. If a racecar has an inherently poor design, it won’t matter how good the driver is, the race team will not win the race. It’s the same with your production machine or process. If the design has downtime designed into the machine, it will not perform optimally and it will require design modifications to improve it. (b) Machine Reliability: Reliability is when the machine goes down because of mechanical or electrical failure caused by machine part wear. Parts that wear prematurely should be upgraded. (c) Machine Speed: Increasing machine speed is a great way to improve output. Here are the steps. First, don’t even try to increase a machine speed until you have the process running with minimal downtime. If the process is out of control, speeding it up only makes it worse. So get the process running steady-state before trying to speed it up. Next conduct a speed probe. Here I recommend getting an engineer or the OEM involved. First see if they are aware of any speed limiters or safety concerns. Then, if there are none, ask if they can slowly increase the machine speed. For example maybe they can increase the speed one percent every two hours until they reach a 10% speed increase. I’ve had great success increasing line speeds. Line speed increases could be low hanging fruit for you too. Just be careful. Make sure you have buy-in and support from your technical resources.
- Material: The 2nd M is for material and I’m sure you have all seen issues with poor quality raw materials. Poor quality raw materials can cause both product defects and processability issues and I’ve experienced both issues. Additionally and obviously, having no raw materials causes machine downtime too. So poor quality or missing raw materials falls into the materials category as it relates to process inefficiencies and downtime.
- Methods: Our third M is for methods and methods reflect our procedures or practices for doing work. These could be things like written work instructions, preventative maintenance systems, computer software, quality systems, training practices, or lean methods like SMED, 5S, single piece flow or kanbans. Lean provides incredible methodologies to improve efficiencies.
- Manpower: Our 4th M is for manpower, or better yet, people power or in the case of process efficiency this M reflects your operator staffing and performance. Tools for the Trenches has many sessions that discusses operator staffing, development and performance. Operators have a big influence on your process performance. Your operators’ effort, skills, abilities, behaviors and performance can really impact your process efficiencies so it’s critical that you provide them with the tools for success.
- Measurement: Our 5th M is Measurement and we don’t think of measurement as impacting efficiency but our ability to accurately measure our processes can have significant impact on our process performance. Let me shed some light here. Typically, when we think of measurement, we think of measuring our products, and sometimes our measurement methods are not as accurate as they could be and sometimes our product gets measured incorrectly and it can cause process downtime as we trouble shoot a phantom issue. A better way to measure our process quality is not to measure our product, but to actually measure and monitor our process conditions. If we thoroughly measure our processes, our need to measure product would be greatly reduced. Its like A + B = C. So we can measure C which is the product our we can measure A and B which are the process conditions. And If A & B are good, then we know C is good too. So our goal should be to accurately measure our processes and let the process control product quality.
- Mother Nature: Our 6th and last M is Mother Nature. Many manufacturing processes are sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity. I know I’ve been involved in a few very sensitive processes whereas we had to add environmental controls to maintain efficient processes. I’m sure you know that Mother Nature can affect your process in many ways. Often, you can counteract Mother Nature and protect your processes from her whims.
Tools for the Trenches has a training session that describes how to improve efficiencies via data analysis, 6M root cause brainstorming, the PDCA cycle and control plans. Check us out at www.tools4t.com to learn more.
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