Mieruka
How to see problems
Jidoka
Building in Quality
Model Line
Focus area to learn tools and develop problem solving mind
Harlsan Industries
About Harlsan Industries
Harslan Industries is a family owned business based in Kalgoorlie Western Australia that manufactures and distributes reverse-circulation drilling equipment for mining exploration activities.
Business Need
The company requested support with its growing production facility, aiming to more effectively utilise their existing manufacturing and office resources whilst providing exceptional customer service. With the assistance of TSSC, Harlsan adapted the Toyota Production System, implementing the three core principles of TPS: philosophy, technical tools and managerial role to develop the Harlsan team through a number of projects.
“Our commitment to working directly with drillers, solving problems and providing the service which Harlsan is renowned for, has always remained our number one priority.”
Approach
Strengthening Customer-First Mindset (Improvement of On Time Deliveries)
One key element of TPS philosophy is customer first: the idea that any process should ensure the downstream customer as well as the end user’s needs are met.
Improving on-time deliveries was a method to strengthen Harlsan’s customer first mindset. To address late orders Harlsan applied an important TPS technical concept: surfacing problems. Here a visual board was created to clearly see at a glance the status of an order and highlight when and where orders were behind schedule. The board was reviewed daily and any orders behind scheduled were problem solved as a team to prevent reoccurrence. Through this simple process of surfacing problems and building problem solving capability late orders were cut to zero within four months.
Increase Customer Responsiveness (Reduce Production Lead Time)
Just-In-Time (JIT): giving customer’s what they want, when they want, in the right quantity is one of two key pillars of TPS. To improve JIT (lead time), stagnation is reduced within a process.
Harlsan, through genchi genbutsu (go to the source, see and understand) found that customers were seeking shorter lead times for their drill rod products. Wanting to further improve customer service, Harlsan implemented changeover reduction and eliminated large batch production where production lead time was reduced from weeks to days whilst still improving productivity and increasing production two-fold.
People Are Our Most Important Resource(Reducing Overburden)
An important concept of TPS is that people are an organisation’s most important resource, where an organisation should always pursue full and meaningful work for its members.
As Harlsan’s customer demand and production was growing so too was the administrative work. To reduce staff overburden Harlsan’s administrative team and TSSC worked together conducting detailed time studies and identified any waste and incidental tasks that could be eliminated or reduced
