Home        Articles        Business Partners        Contact Us        Employment        Quality Assurance        Six Sigma Consulting        SPC Systems        Training       QDMS      QIS

About MAP

Client Profile:
This case study is based on work performed for one of the world’s largest eyeglass manufacturing facilities, located in North America. Cycle times in this eyeglass-manufacturing facility were not predictable, resulting in resource allocation problems, excessive overtime, and customer complaints.

Project Objectives:
The objectives of this project are to:

• Establish standard lead times for order fulfillment
• Reduce the cycle time from order receipt to order fulfillment
• Enable visual management of resource allocation needs at each step of the manufacturing process

Process Description
In this eyeglass manufacturing facility, trays of different colors are used to identify the priority of jobs. Additionally, labels and stickers are used to give the technicians information about a job, such as: lens material, frame style, and special processing requirements. MAP Quality Engineering’s inquiry into the current system confirmed that there is not a consistent procedure in place for prioritizing and completing jobs based on the tray colors-labels-stickers combination. The combination of tray colors, stickers, and labels resulted in the possibility for approximately 56 priority combinations, ranging far beyond the intended 7-color system. This project aimed at creating an effective and efficient prioritization system to control and reduce cycle times.

Past	Current	Future
7 ways to Prioritize --->	56+ ways to Prioritize --->	6 ways to Prioritize --->

Process Analysis
In addition to interviewing managers, technicians, data entry personnel, and workgroup members, MAP Quality Engineering (MAP) reviewed data from the client’s manufacturing laboratory and 27 clinics’ IT systems. MAP also reviewed, in the context of the workgroup, existing tray-color documentation (i.e. assignment of each tray color per day). Additionally, MAP created a process flow diagram with root-cause analysis, and performed a statistical analysis of the data.

MAP Quality Engineering identified internal and external root causes for system inefficiencies. The internal root causes were found to be within the facilities’ control, and they are tied specifically to the way the Black Tray Color is being assigned in the order receipt step of the process and used throughout the facility; the way the Yellow Tray Color is assigned and used throughout the lab; the way the 5 daily colors are assigned in and used throughout the lab, and the way that stickers and labels are used. In Figure 1 below, the colored trays can be seen stacked, in an unorganized manner, on tabletops within the facility.

Figure 1

MAP also identified external root causes that stem from systems that are not within the optical lab’s control, specifically from the clinics’ initiation of rush orders and from natural production cycles.

Project Results
Figure 2 below shows the resulting process where jobs are prioritized by tray color groups that move in unison through the facility for processing. This enables technicians and managers to easily make job prioritization and resource allocation decisions based on the color of the trays within each manufacturing step.

Figure 2

MAP also identified external root causes that stem from systems that are not within the optical lab’s control, specifically from the clinics’ initiation of rush orders and from natural production cycles.

This project resulted in excellent visual management of the cycle times and allowed the client to begin improvements using standard operating procedures and 5S. The end results were:

Cycle time to August 14th	5.8 days
Cycle time after August 14th	5.1 days
Fast payback	less than 1 year
Cost savings between	$400k - $560k