"The concept of value can only be defined by the customer and the producer is the one who must create such value" - James Womack, president of Lean Enterprise Institute
In the last 100 years, the sectors dedicated to manufacturing have had to propose alternatives to maintain competitiveness in a changing market, developing production methods that guarantee timeliness in delivery, customer satisfaction, process effectiveness and efficiency. In terms of costs, from the mass production model promoted by Henry Ford in 1908 through the total quality models, Toyota method, reengineering, to the theory of constraints and lean thinking, among others, organizations have evolved the way in which the needs of the client are determined and the way in which the company must adapt its processes to meet these needs with optimum efficiency; the floriculture sector has not been immune to this situation, in recent years,the behavior of the flower market has undergone important changes along the consumer - distributor (wholesaler, retailer) - supplier chain, for example:
- The consumption of ornamentals has reached a high level of demand in different segments where quality is no longer considered as a differential factor but as an indispensable characteristic, therefore, the purchase decision is based on the added VALUE that is perceived by the product There is a reduction in consumer demand affected by the current economic crisis. Wholesale and retail customers have been forced to rethink their sales and operations models, offering presentations and prices that adapt to the taste and scope of the different types of consumers, eliminating the largest number of reprocesses in their operation, reducing the volume of their inventories and opting to place orders with specific composition characteristics,assortment and packaging that must be supplied by their suppliers in a short time frame Strong competition has been unleashed both between Colombian companies and those from other countries that are present in the market to win and keep customers, customers are migrating to other suppliers that guarantee compliance with your requirements, constant quality and better prices.
To respond to current market demands, it is necessary to review and redesign the way in which floriculture companies communicate with customers and carry out the product transformation process, from cultivation to delivery; The application of models successfully implemented in different sectors that can be adapted to the particular conditions of the sector would facilitate the transition to more efficient and competitive production methods. In the last two decades, the lean thinking model (lean manufacturing) has had a wide development and has been embraced by a large number of companies worldwide with obvious results.
The lean manufacturing model is a production philosophy that emphasizes the specification of value defined by the end customer and the minimization of all resources (including time) used in various activities of the company. It includes the identification and elimination of activities that do not add value in the design, production, management of the supply chain and delivery to customers (Gaither and frazier, 2002), within the context of this model, flow mapping Value is a relatively recent technique that comes to respond to the needs raised by manufacturing companies in order to develop more competitive, solid, efficient and flexible value chains with which to face the difficulties of the current economy (Serrano, 2007).
This article aims to analyze some fundamental aspects of floriculture under the approach of the principles of lean thinking, identifying in the general context of a flower producing company the stages of transformation of the product from cultivation to delivery, determining activities or actions that are commonly presented and that do not generate value or that generate waste in order to propose solutions to eliminate them or minimize their impact and finally, to present some keys to achieve the permanence of a continuous and efficient flow of value that is capable of bring organizations to the level of competitiveness required to excel in the market.
- BASIC CONCEPTS OF LEAN MANUFACTURING
- The 5 Principles of Lean Thinking: Define Value from the customer's point of view: Most customers want to buy a solution, not just a product or service Identify the Value Stream: Eliminate waste by finding steps that do not add value, Most can be eliminated immediately and only a few are unavoidable Create Continuous Flow: Make the entire process flow smoothly and directly from one value-adding step to another, from raw material to consumer Produce Customer's "Pull": produce by Customer orders instead of producing based on long-term sales forecasts Pursuing perfection: Once a company achieves the first four steps, it becomes clear to those involved that adding efficiency is always possible.Lean Manufacturing Tools:
In order to achieve compliance with the principles of lean manufacturing, different “lean” tools have been developed aimed at identifying, correcting and optimizing the production process, among the best known are:
- Value creation chain (VSM) Order and cleanliness (5S) Kaizen Pull system Level production (heijunka) Instruction system (Kankan) Visual management (Andon) Process verification (Jidoka) Devices to prevent errors (Poka yoke) Total productive maintenance (TPM) Quick Model Change (SMED) Manufacturing Cells
The information on the Kanban tag should be such that it should meet both the manufacturing and material supplier needs. The necessary information would be the following:
- Product name / number Quantity required Type of material handling required Where it should be stored when finished Reorder point Product production sequence
Pull method or "production pull"
By obtaining a continuous flow of information, materials and product, another lean tool comes into play, the pull system, with which the organization begins to produce what the customer asks for, to the extent that they request it and when they request it, this implies that is no longer classified in the traditional way generating product for inventory, it is done based on customer orders, both external and internal, that is, the next stage "pulls" the production of the previous stage. To maintain the continuous flow or guarantee a quick response for a high demand product, in some cases it is necessary to maintain a defined stock of product within the process,Supermarkets and FIFO systems (first in first out) are then used, the quantity of which is controlled and defined by the performance between stages to ensure that the critical points of the process always have product available and no bottlenecks are generated.
The above can pose a challenge for flower companies because the cut is made daily and the product is not always sold, however, with adequate integration of information between marketing, field and postharvest, the field can be seen as a “supermarket” from where the information on sales projections and the product necessary to place orders is obtained; Focusing the information for sales on projections and not only on inventories, increases the opportunity to locate a higher percentage of production at a lower process cost and with a more agile response time for the client, additionally, by unifying the information system can plan and prioritize the cutting order in the field to maintain continuous flow,for products with low sales, cut the minimum necessary to maintain the opening point while orders are generated, thus avoiding excesses of non-required flower and the risk of incurring processing costs and "doffing" when processing in bouquets for inventory cold room, at the same time, high demand products can be cut or purchased supplying the needs of the production flow by locating FIFO or defined quantities of product in process between stages to guarantee a quick response in case they are required while the previous process replenish this amount again.High demand products can be cut or purchased meeting the needs of the production flow by placing FIFO or defined quantities of in-process product between stages to guarantee a quick response in case they are required while the previous process replenishes this quantity again.High demand products can be cut or purchased meeting the needs of the production flow by placing FIFO or defined quantities of in-process product between stages to guarantee a quick response in case they are required while the previous process replenishes this quantity again.
Takt time
Establishing the flow and the pace at which the product must advance throughout it are the first two objectives that any conversion of a process to the lean management model must have. Adjusting production to demand is not just a matter of processing the demanded products with the pull concept and the instruments that make the pull flow feasible: supermarkets and FIFO. Adjusting to demand also implies delivering the product to the extent demanded and when it is demanded, which leads to considering the rhythm of production and its adaptation to demand, even when it fluctuates. This rhythm or takt time is obtained by dividing the time available to operate by the expected production to be obtained: The result is the time that can be allocated to each unit of product.
TAKT = AVAILABLE HOURS OF WORK.
BRANCHES TO PROCESS
For this time to become the actual cycle time of the process, that is, the time that elapses from the moment a unit of finished product is obtained until the next one is obtained, each job must deliver a unit of product to the next at this same rate and, with this, the last place will deliver, in turn, at this rate, a finished unit. Therefore, two things must happen:
- All jobs must operate at the pace of takt time All jobs will operate at the same pace, which leads to the application of another lean tool called process balancing, which seeks to assign to each job, a total volume of process tasks that add a time equal to the takt time, in each product unit, this also implies in the case of operators, a multipurpose training that allows people to change tasks when it is necessary to divide the total tasks of the process in groups whose total time is equal to the takt time and assign each of these groups to a different worker. This operation usually presents implementation problems in practice that have various solutions within the available lean tools such asmanufacturing cells, Andon and visual management .
Poka yoke and jidoka
Finally, quality control ceases to be a parallel process and becomes an intrinsic activity within the activity supported by the application of two other lean tools, seeking not to waste labor looking for failures in products made by others and focusing the control on the verification of conformity within the flow by means of the same operators at the delivery and reception between stages, with the Poka yoke or zero defects tools and the implementation of autonomous controls or jidoka that verify compliance with the requirements of quality automatically.
- CONCLUSION
The lean manufacturing model proposes a radical change in the way in which the needs of customers are perceived until today, the transformation of products and the use of resources. In the last 15 years, thousands of companies in different sectors have achieved an evident increase in their sales and productivity levels with minimal investment, applying lean tools in a systematic and organized way, floriculture should not be left behind in the face of the challenge of changing the demand and open space for self-evaluation and the implementation of different production methods, a few companies in the sector have started this improvement path with favorable results in the short and medium term,But it is necessary for the union to promote knowledge about these models and the development of joint strategies for the benefit of the industry.
The success of any improvement project depends on the commitment of the employees and the continuity of the management in the stages of planning, monitoring and taking actions, the advantage of lean manufacturing lies in the power to generate results with a few weeks of implementation and in The creation of a space for productive interaction between workers and managers, strengthening the development of ideas and facilitating the implementation of changes, is an opportunity to maximize the use of the resource with the greatest impact on production costs in floriculture, people, using not only his physical capacity, but also benefiting from his creative potential and his experience.
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