Imagefeirst Signs Case Study Solution
ImageFirst Signs is a custom signage manufacturer located in Grinnell, Iowa. ImageFirst Signs offers a wide variety of expertise including: design, fiberglass signs, prototype, as well as project management, and site survey and installation. The purpose of this project is to reallocate the space in their facility, to help accommodate the high volume production they experience for most of the year. Their facility is experiencing a lack of space because of the continuous need for staging areas, shelving, paint drying racks, and storage for finished inventory. The overflow of material has resulted in an increase of clutter and backtracking.
With a clear understanding of the problems occurring at ImageFirst Signs, one of the objectives of this
project is to reduce the material storage by 10%. Along with reduction, the team is planning on improving the overall organization of the material storage racks and standardizing its location. The final objective is to see a decrease of 5,000 operator footsteps per day, as a result of material flow improvement and the increase in effective use of space.
The team will perform operator interviews to get a perspective of how their work contributes to the final product, as well as collect more detailed information regarding potential areas of waste. Analysis of the current facility, production assembly, and material ordering process through lean manufacturing tools such as red tagging, work sampling, value stream mapping, and spaghetti diagrams will be utilized. Moreover, the team will make these analyses of the current process in order to provide detailed insights of the alternative facility layout, thus, material flow and operator travel can be reduced.
These analyses will result in multiple key deliverables for ImageFirst Signs, including the inventory analysis of the ordering process and material storage and 5S analysis to remove unnecessary equipment and obsolete inventory. Another project deliverable will be spaghetti diagrams for displaying the material and operator activity to identify any non-value added time in the workflow. Finally, an alternative layout will be provided, utilizing more doors and combining operations, as well as displaying the designation of areas. Along with these deliverables, ImageFirst Signs will anticipate savings of $99,300 annually. The calculated cost for this project will be projected at $53,954.80 with a completion date of April 24th, 2017.
With a clear understanding of the problems occurring at ImageFirst Signs, one of the objectives of this
project is to reduce the material storage by 10%. Along with reduction, the team is planning on improving the overall organization of the material storage racks and standardizing its location. The final objective is to see a decrease of 5,000 operator footsteps per day, as a result of material flow improvement and the increase in effective use of space.
The team will perform operator interviews to get a perspective of how their work contributes to the final product, as well as collect more detailed information regarding potential areas of waste. Analysis of the current facility, production assembly, and material ordering process through lean manufacturing tools such as red tagging, work sampling, value stream mapping, and spaghetti diagrams will be utilized. Moreover, the team will make these analyses of the current process in order to provide detailed insights of the alternative facility layout, thus, material flow and operator travel can be reduced.
These analyses will result in multiple key deliverables for ImageFirst Signs, including the inventory analysis of the ordering process and material storage and 5S analysis to remove unnecessary equipment and obsolete inventory. Another project deliverable will be spaghetti diagrams for displaying the material and operator activity to identify any non-value added time in the workflow. Finally, an alternative layout will be provided, utilizing more doors and combining operations, as well as displaying the designation of areas. Along with these deliverables, ImageFirst Signs will anticipate savings of $99,300 annually. The calculated cost for this project will be projected at $53,954.80 with a completion date of April 24th, 2017.