Archive for the ‘manufacturing’ Category

On Monday, StatsCan posted a new study: The year in review in manufacturing.

According to this study, manufacturing sales increased 8.9% from 2009, to a total of $529.8 billion. While this is the largest single annual increase since 2000, it is still below the sales figures from 2008.

Nineteen industries (95.4% of total manufacturing) saw dollar sales increase through 2010 – the largest increases were in the vehicle, petroleum and coal products and primary metal manufacturing industries.

The full study can be read here

There were a number of articles released late last week about different countries around the globe and their states of importing and exporting – looking at what was said about the state of Canadian importing and exporting habits, it’s good to note that things are looking good for Canada.

Canada’s numbers themselves are extremely positive and what we see happening with the US leaves room for great potential for Canada in the future. Most notably, our trade surplus with the US has dropped to $1.1 billion, which fell $1.7 billion from what it was in September.

We are seeing a rise in the exporting of commodities and resources – in general, there was a 13.7% increase of exports of industrial goods and materials. Two very important areas where we saw a very large rise in exports was gold (45% higher) and forestry. It is important to realize that the same amount of the forestry exports went to the Asian market as it did to the US – this could potentially be greatly beneficial to reduce our dependence on the US market.

Lastly, as far as importing goes, we are seeing most of our imports coming from machinery and equipment – making it look like Canadian businesses are investing in their companies right now.

[Source]

StatsCan released August’s Survey of Manufacturing on Friday. Overall, manufacturing sales in August increased 2% to $45.1 billion. This is 17.6% higher than the low of May 2009.

The industry highlights are as follows:

• Motor Vehicle Manufacturing: rose 13.8% to $4 billion
• Petroleum and Coal Products: rose 2.4% to $5.4 billion
• Non-metallic Mineral Products: rose 6.3%
• Fabricated Metal Products: rose 2.3%
• Chemicals: rose 1.5%
• Paper: rose 2.3%
• Primary Metals Industry: fell 2.2%

The provincial highlights are as follows:

• Alberta: rose 2.0%
• British Columbia: fell 0.1%
• Manitoba: fell 4.4%
• New Brunswick: fell 4.4%
• Newfoundland and Labrador: fell 0.7%
• Nova Scotia: rose 2.1%
• Ontario: rose 2.9%
• Prince Edward Island: fell 5.9%
• Quebec: rose 2.3%
• Saskatchewan: rose 6.1%

According to February’s Monthly Survey of Manufacturing, released on April 16th, done by Statistics Canada, manufacturing sales increased once again.

Some quick stats:

1. In eight of the previous nine months, sales have been increasing.
2. Dollar manufacturing sales have increased every month for the past six months. In February, that increase was 0.3%
3. Durable good (electronic products, appliances, furniture, etc) sales dropped by 0.3%, but non-durable (foods, clothing, paper, petroleum, etc) good sales increased by 0.3%
4. Most sales increases were in Ontario and in Western Canada. Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all saw a decline in sales in February

Source

A while back, I posed about Lean Manufacturing Principles. Today I wanted to go a little bit more in depth with how you can prepare a Lean implementation plan.

First of all, let’s take a look at what exactly a lean implementation plan is. A lean implementation plan is how you are going to bring about making your business more lean. This sounds like it should be easy, but there are actually a number of problems with actually implementing lean manufacturing. As Wikipedia says, “The discipline required to implement Lean and the disciplines it seems to require are so often counter-cultural that they have made successful implementation of Lean a major challenge.”

So, if it’s so difficult to implement, how can you create a successful plan?

First, you need to remember that there two aspects that you need to focus on. The first is the actual hardware portion: the machinery, equipment, etc. The second is the human aspect. Just improving one of these aspects will not result in a successful lean implementation – you need both. Once you realize that, you can really start with your implementation plan.

Firstly, you want to focus on everything that is absolutely necessary to run an effective system – this is where all of the big changes are made.

Next, you want to build upon what you did when you made those big changes – this would include implementing the 5S system, for example.

Lastly, you want to work on continuous improvement, where numerous small changes are constantly being made.

Doesn’t sound too difficult, but it’s always more challenging to actually implement the plan than it is to make it. Remember that if you find something in your plan is not working as you would like it to, that your plan is not set in stone – if you find something isn’t working, then revisit that part of the plan. Is it feasible? Is there another way to get to your goals?

What have you been doing for your lean implementation plan?