Paradox lies in a number: 15. Even though we work in less than 2 square meters, every day we risk going back and forth across the company for 15 kilometers. It’s the distance we risk covering step by step to recover materials, tools, components or ask for instructions and information. Often waiting for replies from somebody else. It’s such a waste of time. Another wasted resource. And company wastes, often without realizing it, are hidden behind each functionality of productive processes. This also has an aggravating aspect: man’s work is not put at the center.
It’s been sufficient to assemble a wooden bicycle according to two different methods of organization and working areas – traditional and innovative – to measure the difference: productivity increased up to 30%, reduced final set-up time up to the 45%, number of assembled items tripled in the same time. It’s a recovered competitiveness. «Time is nowadays a small resource, it is necessary to give more attention to the working area, its organization and people. I believe it is a real opportunity even to let talents in the company emerge».
There is above all him, Marco Manzoni, owner of NTS in Lallio, 250 employees, family company in the strict sense and leader in design and construction of moulds and moulding of items in plastic materials, sitting right in the same room on the day of the official inauguration of the Academy of the company. It’s the effort of NTS to make internal training even more a constant, able to comply with the necessity of the company and of people. «These are investments to raise the professionalism of everyone and their well-being at work. We have to keep in mind – explains Manzoni – that there is always a better way to do things in comparison to what has been done before: it is the sense of who is committed to make industrial production still sustainable». It is also the day on which NTS decided, during his 60th year of activity, to make a change and adopt its own a tailor-made organizational model. On the other hand, the advice of the specialized company EY. We begin with an exhortation: «Using our hands we are able to understand the perspective of lean manufacturing at is best» announces Massimo Trebeschi, EY operation manager.
These are the two magic words of the day: lean and manufacturing.
The method is plain, Japanese origins and acronyms, Toyota as absolute reference of lean company. Even because it taught the logic of this method: it is not adopted only to reduce waste, overproduction, down-time, process losses, stocks. «Standardizing a working process – explained Manzoni – means to set a fundamental priority: certifying the safety standard».
Extract of an article taken from Skille – Eco di Bergamo – Wednesday 15 January 2020
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