Táktica Lean & Kaizens

At the end of 2001, Sandvik was being pressured by benchmark results, which required increasing WIP turnover; in addition, customers were demanding shorter delivery times for their products – the lag time between manufacture and delivery to customer’ storage was 24 days.

Intent on resolving these problems, the company launched a daring plan named TMT<10, a project that was designed to cut TMT (Total Manufacturing Time) to less than 10 days within one year.

In May 2002, Taktica joined Sandvik’s team. Once we became aware of the complexity of their production problem, which was due to the company’s highly diversified product mix, we decided to investigate primarily their Planning and Production Control areas. This made it possible to improve the internal process stream and level off their production. In order to increase the plant’s flexibility and make it easier to implement a new culture on the factory floor, those employees directly involved in production were given a series of training sessions in disciplines such as Quick Setup, 5S, and TPM.

By the end of one year of partnership, the objective of the TMT>10 Project had been accomplished and Sandvik began to have a better control over its processes (in-process inventory fell by the same rate as TMT). These results clearly show Lean Manufacturing to be successful even in highly complex environments.

“The use of Lean Manufacturing in Sandvik’s partnership with Taktica showed that this production unit had several opportunities for improvement, which were not visible under our pre-existing conditions of high inventory volumes and large amounts of production orders scattered throughout the plant, with huge standard deviations in process times.”

José Carlos Fiorezi
Industrial Manager
Sandvik do Brasil S.A. Milling Inserts Production Unit