BA Pumps and sprayers are specialist suppliers and manufacturers of agricultural, horticultural and industrial equipment including pumps, sprayers, spreaders and more.
To maximise their ability to deliver to the seasonal demand of their products and the limited talent pool available the business has focused on the need to improve their productivity in addition to increasing the number of staff on the books.
The solution looked at both the fabrication of the products, and the assembly of the subcomponents into the final product.
Through a brainstorming session it was agreed to develop a new frame which was designed to be manufactured as a laser cut kitset, and welded together, this would minimise the inhouse “prefab” labour and eliminate waste through rework when fitting the frames together.
For the assembly of the products process observations were made, the assembly team were manufacturing in batches of 6 and were trying to do the same steps on all 6 spreaders sequentially. While it felt fast, there was a lot of time spent moving between the workpieces that the team did not see until we started the observations. The LMAC team developed a flow line concept building one at a time and implemented a visual management system to keep track of how the day was going.
Fabrication: 180 mins to 60mins
Fabrication from kits for the product is now less than 60 minute where previously it was 3 times this. Without the input from the LMAC team this opportunity would not have been realised so quickly. Overall the product cost remained the same with prefab labour replaced by laser machine centre costs.
Assembly: 1 hours 2 people to 1 hour one person.
Manufacturing time for the spreaders in assembly has reduced by over 50%, allowing the same output in one day from half the labour resource. With the support of LMAC they have also now have the short interval management system which allows them to see if the team are behind for the day and allows them to step in and help resolve issues before they lose significant time.
With ongoing steering from the LMAC the team are now almost independently applying this roadmap of:
This has lead to a significant increase in manufacturing capacity (Approx 1 FTE) enabling more output from the team. More importantly the reduced labour input has meant that the rest of the product lines manufactured are less impacted by a highly seasonal product that previously swamped manufacturing for several months.
The LMAC team have provided us with fresh perspective on how we can streamline our manufacturing process. As we roll out the principles across the wider business we expect to see a significant impact on overall performance.
