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<\/A>According to the Toyota production system – particularly the practice of Kaizen<\/A> \u2013 states that if a problem occurs at the assembly line, each and every employee at the shop floor has the responsibility and right to stop the production line. The line can move only after the root cause of the problem is identified and fixed.Initially, everyone said that it is a ridiculous idea. Nobody stops an automotive assembly line because stopping the line is too expensive. However, soon companies realized that the cost of propagating the issues far outweighs the cost of stopping the line. It is better if we stop the line, fix the problem, and only then continue the production. It became one of the cornerstone principles of lean manufacturing as we know it today.
But there is a real cost of stopping the line and identifying issues at the shop floor. For a typical automotive OEM, it costs around $10,000 per hour to keep the line idle. Just think about it. You will agree that whatever may be the industry there is a cost of discovering problems at the shop floor.
Therefore, whenever possible you want to avoid any systematic causes of line stoppage. For example, you want to avoid robotic interferences, safety violations or issues with your product design that can cause production stoppages. In other words, you need to identify and eliminate such no-build conditions before you start production.
Let\u2019s see with a short video demo how Teamcenter<\/A> and Process Simulate<\/A> can help you to identify and eliminate the no-build conditions in a virtual environment.