Kaizen at DSM Stanyl: “It’s not rocket science, but it works!”

If you do it right, you achieve great things in a week

“For a Kaizen, you have to free up people. They must not work on other things during this period. Because if there are distractions, it’s not going to be a success. A Kaizen is intensive because it comes on top of the normal work and that puts quite a bit of pressure on the organization. Afterwards, you reap the benefits. So the investments you’ve made, you get back twice over.”

“It has had a very positive effect on the atmosphere. Within the whole business, this case is used as an example. You can achieve a lot with a Kaizen, things we didn’t achieve for years in other ways. The striking thing was that the final conclusion was completely different from what we had thought beforehand. That was because we didn’t talk to each other enough in the past. We never took the time to do that. But by talking directly to each other, we also hear the implications for each other.”

“The result is magnificent. The most important thing I have learned from those Kaizens is that you have to include the people on the team who interact with the problem in the field. You have to believe in it as management otherwise you shouldn’t start it. And your goals have to be realistic. You should not want too much at once. The preparation has to be good. And if all that is in order, you can achieve very nice things in a week. But the most important thing is that the people on the floor discover it for themselves. As management you have to have confidence in your organization, confidence in your people. There is a lot of knowledge. Only sometimes there are not the resources. Or sometimes you just don’t know why something doesn’t work as a manager, while at some point in such a Kaizen the people just hand it to you. You have to let them discover it for themselves and then when they have made joint agreements about it, it’s going to be all right.”

The goal was to save half a million euros by reducing off-spec products from 8% to 2.9%. In a very successful Kaizen process, this goal was more than met, resulting in savings as much as 750,000 euros, far exceeding even the original goal!

In Geleen, South Limburg, DSM’s Engineering Plastics business unit produces the new, innovative material Stanyl. This is an extremely strong plastic with excellent resistance to high temperatures (up to 180° C) and to friction. The material has the ability to consolidate multiple metal parts into one part. Thereby, it is a very light product. Among other things, these combinations together make Stanyl an interesting substitute for metals in the automotive industry.

“It’s not rocket science but it works!”

Ingo van de Moesdijk, production manager at the Engineering Plastics business unit was the process owner of the Kaizen project. He explains, “The Engineering Plastics division is suffering from the effects of the crisis. So we were looking for improvements. One of those improvement processes, a Lean process, was started as a result of a scan by McKinsey. Lean was something new for us. For orientation, we went to another DSM plant in Meppen, where they already had extensive experience with Lean. We immediately saw the possibilities for our own organization. We engaged Symbol, Jeroen van der Weerdt. He has trained several people here to become Green Belts.”

First a pilot project

Ingo continues: “From that training, we saw opportunities for Kaizen projects. Kaizen was also new to most people here. With Jeroen we analyzed which projects could qualify. As a kind of exercise, we first set up a simple Kaizen. In it, we performed a SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) on a valve in our plant that did need to be changed. Changing, securing and taking it out of service took a lot of time. So if we could do that in a smarter way, we could save time and gain production time. We went from an average of 15 hours to less than 9 hours of changeover time. And in the process, the safety level has increased because we’ve gone from 7 to 3 bridges. An override is when a safety or instrumental safety device must be temporarily taken out of service in order to work on the installation itself. The number of operations for the override fell from 129 to 89. This success tasted like more.”

Second Kaizen was a huge success

“Then we did a second Kaizen. That became the hit of the year. Sometimes in production the product specification is not met due to a production transition or a process failure in the plant. The result is “wide- spec. This means that the product is produced out of specification, but it is still marketable. It is sold exclusively to internal customers. But these customers have to set up their machines differently. And that costs money. In the first months of 2013, we were averaging 11 to 12% “wide-spec. That was well above our target of 7%. So the goal was, first time right, to produce the right product within specifications in one go.”

“We did a thorough preparation with Jeroen, starting with analyzing historical data. Then we ran a month-long trial before Kaizen Week with some ideas we had gained from those analyses. Then we went into the week. First, we created such a fishbone diagram together as a team to identify what causes “wide-spec. It turned out that too many people were concerned with the problem. The problems were solved in different shifts in their own way. So we improved the instructions and put them on paper. We now have one clear instruction and it includes no more than five lines, made together and understandable to everyone. And that works. Then we started looking at the organization. Who is now responsible for what. Who is the first point of contact and when is escalated. And we summarized that in a very simple diagram and have been practicing that ever since. In the end it was all about transparency: clear communication, clear guidelines and sticking to agreements. As a result, we reduced the wide-spec percentage from 8% to 2.5%. And that’s even better than the original goal of 2.9%. And in October we were even at 1%. We ended up saving a whopping 750,000 euros. This even exceeded the goal of 500,000 euros. And we gained a lot of peace of mind in the organization. All in all, Kaizen is not rocket science. But it does work!”