Production Performance Increase through Five S Technique on Manufacturing Equipment Tools

Abstract

Pharma LLC, a company dedicated to solid drug product manufacturing, performed an assessment and determined they were experiencing overtime cost increases, lower productivity and personnel discomfort with tools and resources available for them to work. To address these issues, the Five S technique was used to minimize equipment downtime, reduce overtime costs, and increase productivity in three manufacturing lines. Several cross functional interviews and feedback sections were held to align on developing and implementing the solution. A shadow board box was implemented on each manufacturing line. This not only allowed to easily find tools within the different areas, but also to identify missing tools and trigger a process to replace if needed. For the process to be maintained, a checklist was added to the daily activities for operations supervisors. The implementation of shadow boards resulted in a reduction of 56.75 hours in equipment downtime over a period of 10 days, overtime cost avoidance of $184K annually and average increase of 15% on productivity for the three manufacturing lines. Key Terms ⎯ Equipment Downtime, Five S, Lean Manufacturing, Process Improvements, Waste Reduction.