How good housekeeping helps safe valuable resources
“A place for everything and everything in its place.” This became the slogan for Princess Power Manufacturing Ltd. This statement plus having no unnecessary items laying around is the essence of Good Housekeeping and the principle of 5S . While General Housekeeping is often underestimated of having a great impact on business, neglecting it causes loss of resources - employees’ time, raw materials and equipment.
When the SMART Myanmar team along with the German experts from ESGE visited Princess Power for the first time, it was obvious that the company was struggling with organizing its production floor: All departments were running out of space which forced them to extend storage, production lines and packaging to aisles and walkways. Old machines and unused equipment occupied an area on the production floor, export cartons were scattered and wastage ready for dumping was stored in corners.
For Princess Power the visit of the experts was an eye opener. The management quickly realized that space constraints are not a by-product of an excellent order situation that they have to live with, but a challenge that can be overcome with good housekeeping. So the management put a complete overhaul of their production on its agenda.
Cutting department, the spread table cannot be used because of piled up bundles and fabric wastage.
Export cartons and wastage dumped in a corner.
Old and unused machines, drinking water bottles and empty drink water containers along with discarded equipment.
Overloaded sewing floor due to feeding too many bundles into the line.
Suggestions:
SMART Myanmar´s SCP trainees and the German expert walked Managing Director Mrs. Lwin Lwin Than through all departments and requested her to join them in assessing the factory through the lens of a third party evaluator.
In the course of the walk-through it was noticed that balancing the production departments would facilitate a smooth production flow and remove space constraints. Management shall instruct the cutting department to only cut a quantity that can processed by sewing department in a day. And sewing department must only take cut pieces according their daily sewing capacity. If one department starts overloading then automatically the following departments end up in chaos which leads to decreased productivity.
The SMART Myanmar team and ESGE supported the company in training their staff to follow the 5S rules and clean up the workplace, distinguish between necessary and unnecessary items (and remove the latter) and look for ways to keep their workplace organized.
The cutting department is cleaned up and only the quantity is cut that is needed to feed the sewing department for the day.
Export cartons collected and stored at one place. Unused sewing machines covered for protection.
The management bought a new water tank for drinking water and placed it outside of the production floor so all workers have access.
Well organized sewing lines without bottlenecks. The sewing line in-charge is now only feeding as much bundles into the line as can be processed per day.
In Princess Power the management encouraged good housekeeping as a way of life – not just a special activity when visitors are coming.
As a result workplaces became cleaner, well organized, safer and more pleasant for workers. Utilization of floor space improved and the workflow became smoother and more systematic and non-value added activities were reduced such as searching for tools, materials and documents.
Princess Power is on a good way in attaining its goal for producing garments efficiently and having a safe workplace for employees. A month after the clean-up the rate of rejected pieces has already decreased by 10% of and the productivity increased by 20%.
