Writing a new chapter

Exide’s battery plant in Kansas City took a step in the right direction by placing the fate of its lean manufacturing initiative in the hands of its workers.

by Paul V. Arnold

The manufacturing economy stinks and their employer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April, but you wouldn’t know it by stepping foot on the plant floor at Exide Technologies GNB Industrial Power in Kansas City, Kan.

At this lead-acid vehicle battery maker, you notice optimism and a can-do attitude as much as you do the production machine fires that melt lead blocks into slick, silvery water that pours into parts molds.

This genuine happiness can be traced to the company’s lean manufacturing initiative, Exide’s Customer-focused Excellence Lean Leadership (EXCELL), which started in April 2001, one year before the financial restructuring. More specifically, the feeling is the result of plant workers’ involvement with lean and their first-hand use of tools such as kaizen, 5-S, error-proofing, standard work, Six Sigma and Total Productive Maintenance.

Buoyed by lean’s positive impact, plant employees are moving forward.

“When the company filed, people had some minor fears,” says hourly worker John Burch. “But as a week or two or a month passed, everyone saw that lean was here to help us and make us even better.”

Why? Just because Why do plant floor workers like EXCELL? A big reason is . . . “just because.”

Prior to lean, hourly employees generally played a passive or secondary role in plant improvement efforts. If they noticed a problem or wished to question standard procedures, half the time they kept the problem or idea to themselves.

“If they did pass it on, the standard comeback was, ‘Just because,’” says Burch. “Can we make a change? ‘No.’  Why? ‘Just because we’ve always done it this way.’”

If a problem did call for a change, hourly workers felt left out. A supervisor would farm out an improvement project to an engineer, who would survey the situation and make a fix or redesign with little or no input from machine operators. The change would be elaborate and pricey, but not necessarily an improvement.

Today, hourly workers are leading dynamic, cost-effective change. Three-quarters of production workers participated in at least one kaizen (continuous improvement) event in the past year. Production and maintenance workers regularly submit ideas for projects. And, two young operators — Burch and Ed Chmidling — now serve as full-time “lean champions.”  They run lean events, train co-workers and serve as a conduit between labor and management on lean issues.

Workers’ use of lean tools in the past 18 months helped the plant: • cut scrap and waste 45 percent, inventory levels nearly 50 percent and injuries more than 50 percent; • improve uptime 25 percent, productivity nearly 20 percent and on-time shipments 15 percent; and, • earn EXCELL’s Copper certification (the first Exide plant to achieve it) and close in on Bronze status.

Here is a sample of Kansas City workers’ involvement in EXCELL.

No more heavy lifting Ever lift 40,000 pounds by hand? Operators in the Exide/GNB plant’s casting and pasting departments did on a daily basis.

Casting machine operators grabbed 65-pound blocks of lead off of a cart — 300 blocks during a 12-hour shift — and deposited them into melting pots. That’s 19,500 pounds, but the job was only half done. The molten lead poured into molds that formed grids, the skeleton of a lead-acid battery. The same operators took the grids — another 19,500 pounds — and placed them on carts.

The carts would then go to pasting operators, who loaded grids onto machines that filled the grids’ holes with a muddy mixture of lead oxide, acid, water and a bonding material. They loaded the heavier, filled grids onto another cart.

“At the beginning of the day, it’s not too bad. But by the end of the day, you go home sore,” says Chmidling.

Members of a kaizen team — a dozen or more workers (at least half from the hourly ranks) who go on a two- to five-day idea crusade — came up with a better way.

For the casting department, team members developed a pneumatic lifting tool that carries the lead blocks to the pot. They also created a “cassette” that mounts to the casting machine and catches the grids.

When the cassette is full, a forklift grabs and carries it either to the pasting department or stacks it on other cassettes in a holding area. The forklift can attach the cassette onto the pasting machine, which automatically loads the grids. Another cassette sits at the end of the line and catches filled grids.

“If you have the same job but don’t have to lift all that weight, you quickly become a lean fan,” says Burch.

Cassettes are expensive (in the thousands of dollars), but it’s a drop in the bucket since the idea addresses safety issues, raises productivity, and eliminates the need for pallets and other stacking media.

On the line that wraps and seals filled grids with fiberglass coating, a Total Productive Maintenance event also addressed a lifting problem.

In this area, operators would hoist a large, 50-pound guarding cage when a plate jammed. The task was unruly since the average operator is a 5-foot-4-inch woman. Working with maintenance mechanics, a hatch was cut into the cage, allowing quick, easy and safe access.

Quick and easy adjustments Many of the plant’s lean ideas are exceptionally inexpensive.

Burch and other members of a kaizen team developed a basic solution to a problem on a machine that trims excess material from a grid.

“The device that centered the grid for trimming was high maintenance,” says Burch. “It had two pistons and two arms that centered the grid. Operators had to loosen three or four bolts on each end to adjust it. It was such a hassle that some operators didn’t mess with it.”

That led to poorly trimmed grids.

This kaizen team thought outside the box and outside the plant, getting inspiration from a local amusement park.

“The Worlds of Fun park has a water ride called ‘Fury of the Nile.’  The ride has bumpers on it which center the inner tubes and guide them where they are supposed to go,” says Burch.

Based on the team’s designs, engineers built guides for the trim machine. Pistons, arms and pneumatics are no longer needed. And if an adjustment is required, quick-pull pins replaced the bolts.

This improvement cost $33.

Breathing easier, safer Lead is a critical component in the manufacturing process at the Kansas City plant, but it’s also an area of great concern.

Workers exposed to excessive amounts of lead — from airborne oxide dust or handling of oxide-laden grid paste — can experience anemia, nervous system dysfunction, kidney problems and hypertension. Lead is also transferable. Workers can contaminate others by passing on lead-laden work clothes and materials.

Pasting operators keyed several lean projects that reduced lead exposure and contamination risks.

In the pasting department, two overhead mixing machines make 2,400 pounds of paste at a time. In creating a batch, the dry, rust-colored oxide component dropped into the spinning mixer slightly before water was added. This action created a puff of lead dust. A kaizen event changed the process so that the water was given a five-second head start. This reduced airborne lead levels in this area nearly 60 percent.

Also in pasting, operators must fill out five checklists that chronicle a shift’s production figures, first-piece inspection numbers and cleaning routines. These were paper-based and passed in to supervisors. Not only was this excess paperwork, but it was messy and dangerous since operators filled out the checklists with gloved hands coated in the muddy lead mixture. Office workers came in contact with the contaminated paper.

The solution? Operators now use a China marker to fill in laminated checklists posted on a board in the work area. A supervisor comes by at the end of the shift and records the numbers on a single sheet of paper.

Such ideas have lowered the average employee blood lead level to 15 micrograms per deciliter. The nationally accepted level for industrial plant employees is 50.

Seeing things clearly The bottom line? Lean helps plant floor workers pinpoint issues that impact them, the product and the customer.

“I kind of associate our lean program with my glasses,” says Burch. “For years, I thought I saw fine. Then I went to the eye doctor and he said I needed glasses. Once I put the glasses on, I saw how bad I was seeing. That is kind of how it is with lean. You might be doing your best, but until you start tearing it down and seeing where you can get better, you aren’t seeing the whole picture.”

This article appeared in the October/November 2002 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2002.

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