Wheatland Tube

Finding the right speed┬áWheatland Tube is fortunate enough to be able to face softening demand for its products confidently, thanks to a well-embedded continuous improvement program that it started in the good times, as John OÔÇÖHanlon discovers. From the railings that keep you from falling into the Grand Canyon to the structural columns that hold up your building, there are, when you think about it, a lot of varieties of steel tube and a lot of uses for it.  The process for converting sheet steel into all these varieties is quite complex, but itÔÇÖs a very mature industry, and Wheatland Tube is one of the most established, with something like a third of the US market.Founded in 1877 by John Maneely, Wheatland now has 11 manufacturing locations in the United States and one in Canada. With over a hundred years of expertise, Wheatland Tube was profitable and benefiting from the boom in manufacturing and construction at the beginning of its third century. However, restructuring three years ago saw Wheatland Tube and its sister companies, Seminole Tubular Products and Atlas Tube, reorganized by its new owner, the Carlyle Group, under the umbrella of the John Maneely Company (JMC).It was time to take a close look at the disparate working practices across the different plants that had developed, to analyze and perhaps standardize the processes they operated. At that time, Robb Kirkpatrick was appointed as vice president of continuous improvement. A long-term process improvement specialist with 30 yearsÔÇÖ experience, Kirkpatrick learned about lean production in Japan and brought that expertise to operations in the US, working as a vice president at Danaher Corporation and subsequently as an independent consultant. Soon he was joined by John Beres in the role of continuous improvement director, who had nine years of industry experience and had worked for the prestigious Rolls-Royce Company before joining JMC.ÔÇ£All these companies were successful,ÔÇØ says Kirkpatrick. ÔÇ£They had been through the ISO rigors, but to take it to the next level there had to be some methodology to analyze and figure out which processes are good and which you want to experiment with. The first thing we did was to start to analyze the opportunities and the sites.ÔÇØIt took a couple of months to make an initial decision as to where attention should focus. Beres and Kirkpatrick were looking for what lean practitioners call the ÔÇ£low-hanging fruit.ÔÇØ But first they had to ascertain how quality was currently being measured and where the financial opportunities lay.Changeovers were an early target. ÔÇ£The mills were spending a lot of unproductive minutes between processes. One of our big campaigns over the last two years has been on how we improve throughput at our mills and use that as a springboard to teach the people that they really can do better,ÔÇØ says Kirkpatrick.That fruit fell into their hands. Changeover times fell over the 2007ÔÇô08 fiscal year by an average of 27 percent, and in the four months that have elapsed in the current year, a further 12 percent reduction has been achieved. ÔÇ£To date, weÔÇÖre managing to spend 36 percent less time doing major changeovers,ÔÇØ says Beres. ÔÇ£We used simple SMED [single minute exchange of die] or quick-change tools as we trained our teams on how to do a quick changeover, how to measure and improve with each changeover, and why thatÔÇÖs important for our customers.ÔÇØThe next focus was on quality. Some of the mills use a continuous flow process, Kirkpatrick explains, with a 20-ton spool of metal loaded at one end and 1-ton bundles loaded onto a truck at the other. At other sites, product is moved from operation to operation. In either case the key metric is yield.To measure this, Kirkpatrick and Beres introduced a concept they call ÔÇ£roll throughput yieldÔÇØ (RTY). ÔÇ£RTY measures your ability to get something through the process by only touching it one time, and we started that in April 2007, when the probability of getting that was around 78 percent. That could be classed as good, but by February 2009 we had hit almost 85 percent. So from a quality point of view, weÔÇÖve been able to move the needle over six percentage points in 22 months.ÔÇØRTY was introduced at JMCÔÇÖs largest mill at Sharon, Pennsylvania, which is also the most complex where processes are concerned. ÔÇ£We measured nine core processes to find out how often they got it through the process right the first time,ÔÇØ says Beres. ÔÇ£First we measure the process, then we dig into it to find out the root cause why itÔÇÖs unsatisfactory, then we take some actions, and thatÔÇÖs when the numbers start to move north.ÔÇØIntroducing lean to a traditional unionized workforce with entrenched ways of doing things is never easy. Kirkpatrick and Beres decided to keep training sessions brief and then let the employees use the tools on the job. ÔÇ£The more they work with the tools, the more educated they become in using them. We donÔÇÖt try to force-feed them.ÔÇØ ItÔÇÖs a matter of pointing out, with hard data, the improvements that can be made, Kirkpatrick says, but you also need to show people the benefits: their quality of life improves, they get to go home on time, and their day is not as stressful. And there are monetary rewards too. Piece-rate incentives donÔÇÖt drive quality, Beres and Kirkpatrick agree, so they are introducing a gain-share program that will use customer value rather than volume as a basis for bonus payments. ÔÇ£If we make products and our customer is buying them, the business makes money and we will share those dollars with the employees.ÔÇØThereÔÇÖs a tendency to think that if the mill is running as fast as it can, thatÔÇÖs a good thing, but Kirkpatrick tells them ÔÇ£speed killsÔÇØÔÇöit kills quality. ÔÇ£One reason we went to the RTY model was because they would produce a lot of product that we then had to put right, which was more costly than getting it right the first time. You need to run your product at the right speed to make the highest-quality product you can, not run it as fast as you can just because you can.ÔÇØ Kirkpatrick and Beres are great believers in sustainability, and the best result they are seeing is that people are starting to experiment with lean tools on their own initiative. ÔÇ£When we started out, we were pretty much spearheading the activity, because at the end of the day nobody really wants to change. I firmly believe that if John or I were not here, many things would keep going, because the people have seen the results that help them from day to day.ÔÇØ  ÔÇô Editorial research by Kristina Perley┬á