[Jewelry making - Article 00296] - Re:tidy bench

[Mark Zirinsky - Production Engineering]

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Hello!

    I guess I have been a hobbyist long enough now that I have brought some of
    my professional practices back from work to my "bench."

    In my second business, we manufacured an electronic product. Our shop
    forman took all the clutter in our produciton area and moved it intot he
    hallway, then brouight each item back piece by piece into storage areas,
    inventory areas, work in progress areas and testign areas until everythign
    was neatly organizaed. When he had finished, the produciton areas were
    completely bar (completely) except for a workbench, a stool, lighting, a
    soldering iron and only the exact number of parts needed yto complete the
    piece that was beign worked on at that momemt (average cycle tiem was abotu
    20 minutes).

    The result of this was that our defect rate decreased from 4% to less than
    0.5%, our average cycle time (to do the manufacturing steps) went from 20
    minutes to 8 minutes, and the assemblers went form a 1/2 horu break in a
    day to 1.25 hours per day.

    Our production went up, costs when down, everyone was more realxed,
    everybody was happy.

    Why was all this possible? Simple: with a clean work area there are no
    distrations from the work at hand. There is nothing else to concentrate on
    but whatever you are working on. No pieces of past projects,  pieces of
    stuff that you might get to, or other distrations.

    My shop at home is set up with 4 benches: 1 for cabbing, 1 for trim
    sawing, 1 for miscellaneous grading and slab sizing, and one for design.
    The design area is ther messiest of the 4, the produciton one (cabbing) is
    bare except for lighting, the machine and the piece I am working on. 

Mark Zirinsky


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