Changing technologies
OPPORTUNITIES IN MANUFACTURING

Manufacturing looks to continuous improvement

Companies are seeking savvier methods and a more businesslike way of thinking

“You may need more than an engineering degree to succeed in manufacturing today. There are marketing demands and sales demands, and engineers must learn to adjust.” – Maria L. Campbell, SC Johnson

By Laura Gater
Contributing Editor

Ocean Spray continuous improvement manager Melissa Draper checks out a pilot plant where new runs of the company’s cranberry and grapefruit products are tested.

Project manager Gloria Garcia is implementing lean manufacturing practices using the Deere Production System at a John Deere plant in Torreón, Mexico.

New technologies continue to influence the way companies do business and think about business at all levels. It’s been half a century since the introduction of computers changed the face of manufacturing, and a dozen years since computers created new lines of direct communication between engineers and workers.

Today, methodologies like Six Sigma, Lean, Lean Plus and in-house production systems developed by Toyota, Deere and others are not only streamlining the work but radically changing the way engineers look at their manufacturing jobs.

Clearly, business concerns are taking their place beside the engineering outlook. Today’s up-and-coming industrial or manufacturing engineer is as likely to be working on an MBA as an MS, and many savvy techies have added both those degrees, or plan to do so.

IE/MBA Gloria E. Garcia works for John Deere in Mexico
After graduating from Bradley University (Peoria, IL) with a BSIE in 1993, Gloria Garcia went to work for Eureka, first in Bloomington, IL, then in the company’s El Paso, TX facility. While in Texas, Garcia worked on her MBA through the University of Phoenix New Mexico campus, completing it in 1999.

Shortly after that Deere & Co (Moline, IL) came calling. “I grew up in Moline and wanted to return to the Midwest and my family,” Garcia says. “But my basic reason for taking the job is that John Deere is a great company to work for.”

Over the past seven years Garcia has worked at several facilities of the heavy equipment giant. Since March 2007 she’s been located in Torreón, Mexico as a project manager, responsible for implementing lean manufacturing practices using the in-house Deere Production System (DPS). The DPS is Deere’s implementation of the continuous improvement process in manufacturing pioneered by companies like Toyota.

Throughout her career Garcia’s work has focused on manufacturing, including stints as an environmental coordinator and a design engineer. When she first moved to John Deere she began as a facilitator with the Deere Harvester Works agricultural equipment factory. She helped implement W Planner, a Deere software program aimed at setting new standards on the manufacturing floor.

“It documents the product assembly process,” she says, “and helps you set up your assembly line.”

Later, Deere asked Garcia to train others on the W Planner software. “I got to travel all over the world and see the differences and similarities within the John Deere factories. This software lets everyone use the same tool to set standards.”

The DPS was developed about five years ago, Garcia says. “It’s a scorecard that evaluates the factory and eight element lanes, and even includes things like leadership and employee environment. It’s basically a measure of how you are running your operations.”

At Torreón, Garcia is working with the element-lane teams to bring the facility up to DPS standards. “It’s a methodology that says how the facilities should make their products. It’s lean manufacturing,” she explains.

Garcia has seen a lot of changes in manufacturing technology in her dozen years in the field. “You can’t have a workforce today without a solid knowledge of computers,” she says.

ChE/MBA Melissa Draper: continuous improvement at Ocean Spray

Melissa Draper.

Melissa Draper joined Ocean Spray (Lakeville, MA) in 2006 as a manager of continuous improvement. “My job is to lead the continuous improvement mission at Ocean Spray,” she says. “We have eight manufacturing locations, and we strive for perfection in every plant.” She also develops and teaches the continuous improvement methodology.

Draper completed her BSChE at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) in 1998. Then she joined the ops management training program of Johnson & Johnson Professional (New Brunswick, NJ), which manufactures medical products, also working as a production supervisor. She left J&J for Boston College (Boston, MA) where she earned her 2000 MBA, and then she joined Tyco. “That’s when I jumped into the continuous improvement arena, particularly Lean and Six Sigma,” she explains.

Draper always liked math and science, especially chemistry. “I originally wanted to be an astronaut, but when I realized that wasn’t going to happen I decided to try manufacturing,” she says. “Engineering gave me the discipline to think through the approach to a problem. That helps me with my job now.”

Ocean Spray is a grower-owned co-op that does high-production manufacturing of cranberry and grapefruit products like juices and sauces. “It’s not a discreet process where you begin working on one widget and the same widget comes out at the end. The lines we have are continuous, and it’s nearly impossible to watch one bottle or can go all the way through,” she says.

“It takes a different approach to solve problems within a continuous environment versus a discrete environment. It’s very different from the discrete processes I was trained on.”

Nevertheless, “It’s the same methodology and the same approach,” Draper declares. The methodology she uses is based on Six Sigma. It’s a five-step approach: defining the problem, measuring the data, analyzing relationships of the factors, improving to correct the problem, and controlling the problem to make sure the changes are sustained.

“Continuous improvement is something you will see in the near future, if you’re not seeing it already,” she says. “People are embracing it.”

ChE/MBA Angelo Suitor works on installation and compliance at 3M

Angelo Suitor.

As a resident engineer at a Northridge, CA plant of 3M (St. Paul, MN), Angelo Suitor is in charge of new equipment installation. “My responsibility is overseeing an installation from beginning to end. And because mine is a pharmaceutical plant, I have to work with the team on the validation of the equipment for compliance.” 3M, he notes, makes some 55,000 different products worldwide.

Suitor joined 3M after earning his BSChE at the University of Michigan. He began in the company’s Woodbury, MN engineering systems technology center, working on coating technology and process research, helping to create new products and identify solutions for process-related problems.

Next he moved to the display and graphics business lab, focusing on scaling up new products from the lab to production.

This year, Suitor completed his MBA at the University of Minnesota and moved into a Black Belt position in 3M’s Monrovia, CA Six Sigma facility. Now he’s a project manager for the Northridge plant, overseeing Green Belt employees. “Over the last few years, I worked on a Green Belt project that was almost as large as a Black Belt project, and I got very interested in those kinds of projects,” he says.

In a manufacturing setting, Suitor says, engineers often get overloaded with projects. “As a project manager, you need the ability to motivate people to work on your project, as opposed to the ten or so other projects they have on their plates.

“You learn to identify what will have the most impact on the business.”

At 3M, Suitor notes, “You can stay on the technical path and work toward the corporate scientist level, or you can move up the management or business side. For engineers, becoming a Six Sigma expert is a good bridge to the management path.”

Dr Nancy Jestel: customer issues at General Electric

Dr Nancy Jestel.

In 1998 Nancy Jestel received her PhD from the University of Michigan. It was conferred by the departments of chemistry and biological materials science. Then she took a job with General Electric, which makes everything from jet engines to power generation, medical imaging and environment-friendly “ecoimagination” products. The new Dr Jestel was assigned to the technical leadership program.

“You spend three eight-month assignments at different facilities,” she explains. She worked first in a plant in West Virginia, then moved to southern Indiana and finally landed at a GE manufacturing plant in Selkirk, NY. “I’ve always worked with technology for our global analytical group,” she notes.

Today Jestel is a global spectroscopy functional group leader. “My day-to-day role is as the site spectroscopist,” she says. “I do methods development to support the design of products and new processes.”

As an analytical chemist, Jestel explains, it’s her job to determine what the product is and how the modules fit together.

She’s currently working on customer issue cases. “If someone in the field is not happy, we determine whether it is a problem on our end, or if the customer may be using the product in a manner for which it was not intended. We try to figure out where the problem originated and make sure it doesn’t happen again. It can get very complicated, depending on what the issue is.”

Jestel’s career has been all GE, although she did have other jobs while she was a student at the University of Massachusetts, where she received her BS degree in 1993. In her years at GE, she says, one of the biggest changes in manufacturing has been the impact of IT on the computers and sensors in the plant. “Years ago, we put in place a system to merge all the sensor data into a giant database. You can get a good picture of how the plant is running, especially from a master control room.”

Deb Elam, chief diversity officer, notes that “At GE, diversity is about the strength that results from a team with varied experiences, backgrounds and styles. Technology and innovation fuel GE’s growth, and having the best global engineering talent will help us achieve our goals.”

ME Jan Allman is site manager for three Ford plants

Jan Allman.

Jan Allman went to Kettering University (Flint, MI), where she received her BSME in 1990. Kettering is a co-op school: “You go to school for three months, then do your co-op for three months, for all five years.”

Allman co-opped for Ford Motor Co throughout her school career, and the automotive manufacturer hired her as an engineer when she graduated. “I had a leg up when I was hired in,” she says. “I knew the system.”

In more than seventeen years with Ford, Allman has worked as a process engineer, quality process engineer, reliability engineer and superintendent. Early in 2007 she moved to Cleveland, OH as site manager for three facilities: two engine plants and a casting plant.

It’s her responsibility to drive standard practices, monitor metrics and work with managers to make sure that strategy stays consistent. “I look at what we need to impact, how we move toward Lean and how to be more competitive,” she says. “I also help the teams form their own strategies.”

Auto plants are, by their nature, low-volume manufacturing facilities, and right now the Cleveland site is lower than usual because one plant is being rehabbed. “When you have reduced volume it’s harder to be competitive,” Allman says. “But we have to use the same lean model and constantly reinforce the message.”

All the Ford lines are standardized and essentially the same at every plant. “It’s flexible equipment, so we’re able to change things over quickly,” Allman explains. “It’s easier to train people when all the equipment is the same, and you always have the option of pulling resources from other plants.”

ME Alberto Ortiz: keeping production going at Siemens

Alberto Ortiz.

Alberto Ortiz left Mexico for Chicago when he was twelve. He learned English in school, then attended the University of Illinois and Wilbur Wright College. When he got his BSME in 1981 he took a job with Siemens Building Technologies (Buffalo Grove, IL) where he’s now a manufacturing engineer.

Siemens Building Technologies is a provider of energy and environmental solutions, building automation and controls, fire safety and security system solutions. Ortiz works with production processes for electronic and pneumatic thermostats, actuators, control valves, relays, sensors and other HVAC products.

“My job is to keep production going,” Ortiz says. “I find out why something doesn’t work or is failing.”

In his plant, he says, the company introduces new products, implements new processes and works on tooling and testing. He does pilot studies on new products and monitors yields.

Cost reduction is another important goal. “We try to eliminate or minimize rejects, rework and process waste, whether it’s idle time or unnecessary repetition.

“We’re like the white blood cells of manufacturing,” he explains. “When there’s a problem we are the first to arrive at the problem area. We implement a short-term solution to stop the bleeding and a long-term solution to cure the problem.”

IE Majid Abab manages the core IE group at Boeing

Majid Abab.

Majid Abab began working at aircraft manufacturer Boeing (Seattle, WA) after he got his BSIE from California State University-Long Beach in 1978.

Today he’s an industrial engineering manager for the core IE group, responsible for simulation technology process and skills for the entire enterprise in both the defense and commercial arenas.

In manufacturing, it’s Abab’s job to promote standardization of simulation software. “It’s meant to give IE people better tools for better business practices,” he says. He’s also implementing Lean and Lean Plus processes, with the goal of combining some 160 different systems into about thirty-six while retaining the previous consistency levels. “This results in cycle-time reduction,” says Abab.

Boeing is traditionally a low-volume production business, but production will be increasing as orders come in for the newly unveiled, state-of-the-art 787 aircraft. Abab has identified some critical skills for engineers on the manufacturing line.

“We need bright engineers with multiple perspectives who are eager to grow with all the opportunities that will be available,” he says. Boeing has started a rotation program to move young engineers around the company and the manufacturing processes to learn various parts of the job.

Abab is also involved with Boeing’s internship program, and with university relations and the education of future engineers. He’s excited about the company’s fellowship program, which brings in engineering professors over the summer months to show them what’s new in production.

IE/MBA Maria Campbell: breadth of experience at SC Johnson

Maria Campbell.

When Maria L. Campbell took her first job with SC Johnson (Racine, WI) in 1985, she was looking for breadth of experience and the chance to understand many areas of a business. She got her BSIE from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) in 1980 and went to work as an IE at Upjohn Co (Kalamazoo, MI), but after eight years there she was ready to make a change. SC Johnson offered her the breadth she craved, a chance to return to her Midwestern roots and the opportunity to continue her education. Her 1990 MBA is from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL).

SCJ makes household cleaning, storage, air care, personal care and insect control products that are distributed worldwide. Campbell began there as a project engineer in the manufacturing plant. “That’s where you find most of your IEs,” she notes.

One of her biggest projects was developing an on-line maintenance system. “It was a very good learning experience,” she recalls with pleasure. “Most of the maintenance workers had years of experience and a good grasp of the organization. They really helped me.”

Next she was a night-shift supervisor in the QA department, which was going through a reorganization. “I went to school in the early evening and worked from 10 pm to 7 am, supporting a team of ten people, some of them engineers.”

When she finished her MBA Campbell moved to marketing, then returned to manufacturing to lead a new government initiative in the safety and environmental affairs department. She went on to human resources, working with the company’s sales organization.

After this varied career, she was asked to lead a new diversity initiative for the company. “We needed to understand how the market was changing,” she explains. “I got to use all my skills, especially my engineering degree because IE is really all about process orientation.

“I drew on all my skills to take the company to another level of diversity. Today diversity is critical to every aspect of our business, from the manufacturing floor to the corporate offices.”

Although she’s currently director of diversity, Campbell makes it her business to stay abreast of manufacturing. She always tells young engineers to think beyond their technical skills.

As manufacturing becomes more automated, she says, engineers need to do more cross-functional work. “You may need more than an engineering degree to succeed in manufacturing today. There are marketing demands and sales demands, and engineers must learn to adjust.”

D/C

Sue Marquette Poremba is an engineering and construction writer in State College, PA.

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