Does this sound familiar?
"Aaaahhhhhh!!! They took my square again!!"
One of our shop workers was obviously upset by something.
"Who's they?" I replied.
"Second or third shift. When I left yesterday, all my tools were right here by my machine. I come in this morning and they’re gone again. Now I’m going to have to spend the next hour hunting them all down again."
Houston, we have a problem
As I tried to understand his frustration, I could see that he basically just threw all his tools on a shelf beside his press brake when he wasn’t using them. There was no straightforward way of knowing what was or wasn’t there until you went to look for it to use.
I was aware of a great management tool called an end of shift checklist. In sum, at the end of the shift, the department would be responsible to date a checklist that confirmed that all the tools assigned to this machine were there. As each shift would leave, they made sure to check. To do this quickly, it had to be visual. Each tool had to have a home location that was easily identified.
Organizing the tool board
We started by identifying all the tools that needed to be at the machine. Once we knew that, we were able to size the pegboard needed to display them. When the pegboard cabinet arrived, we drew shadows around each of the tools and labeled them. Then we listed each of them on the end of shift checklist.
Now at the end of each shift, the leader of that department was able to quickly scan the board and verify all the tools were in place. Additionally, there was no longer a pile of tools on a shelf to sort through. When the operator needed a certain tool, he could easily see where it was and put it back after using it. Now all I had to do was to see our shop workers smiling face when he saw that we were able to solve the problem that bugged him every morning.
Information provided by Strong Hold Products
