Internship Notes

I did my production internship as a long term intern in a company which my graduation thesis advisor Prof. Dr. Bülent Durmuşoğlu works as consultant in there. It was a five month period started in July and finished in December. I did my internship and also I realized implementation part of thesis. The thesis topic was “The Principles of Lean Cell Design and An Implementation in A Real Manufacturing System”.

The factory had three production floors. The floors are entitled according to high runner products’ names and the cells are generally entitled according to big customer names. The products are mostly hot water, steam, and oil equipments. Those are mostly various stainless steel parts which produced after intensive welding processes. The factory has started its lean journey with Mr. Durmuşoğlu 6 years ago. Lean studies were realized in some cells. There were many progresses. Besides there were many cells which must be worked for being lean.

I worked on the first floor, compensator floor and on the cell H. I entitled also as cell H. in my thesis for hiding the customer’s name. There was not any lean study in cell H and it was a hard cell due to product variety. There were 17 employees and more than 20 different produced products.

Firstly, flowcharts and technical drawings of all those products are given to me. I drew current state value stream maps of products on paper by looking flowcharts and drawings. I showed those maps to cell’s production engineer and we edited the necessary parts. Some operations’ cycle times and WIP(work in progress) numbers are lack on current state value stream maps. I did time studies and I counted WIP numbers for necessary processes. I completed all current state value stream maps. After, a team is made by Mr. Durmuşoğlu, Continuous Improvement Department engineers, the cell’s production engineer, employees of cell sometimes, and me. We studied on current state, gave suggestions for future state, and determined how the future state will be. We started to implement future state offers. The cell started to improve and successful results were taken. I don’t want to extend the writing with writing all duration and results. It was a very good experience for me and I wrote a good thesis. I won the second prize in the “The Best Graduation Thesis Competition” in ITU Industrial Engineering Department. It was a good end before graduation.

I want to write some lacks I saw in the factory if is looked from lean perspective. My ideas are of course an unexperienced engineer’s ideas and their accuracy can be argued.  

• I entered to different departments during 5 months. People in every department were sympathetic. They took care and conversed with me and they answered my questions. After conservation and learning of my graduation thesis topic they had started to tell their own departments’ problems. Reasons of those problems were other departments or people as always! There was really a problem like that and it was not solved.

The solution of that problem is setting regular cross-functional meetings.

• Sales department was working as disconnected from production. They agreed with customers, regardless of the production capacity. It was creating pressure on cells and also on my cell. The system was broken for delivering that orders.

The solution of that problem is taking lean education of sales department and working coordinately with production department.

• I was good with employees of my cell. We had conversed due to we worked in the same cell. They were not happy when the beginning of the time study and after it didn’t be problem. They even were sending message of starting welding when I work in the office. They started to say the doing time study before welding if I want. I did time study but nearly all employees were saying the supplier problem. I couldn’t say anything to them but I had known that they are right. Production engineer could predict approximately to cycle times of processes but we did time studies for even that minutes are important. I explained to employees the reasons when I start to time study and it is not related with them. Employees had said that supplier problem must be solved before minutes. Because some suppliers hadn’t sent products two weeks and 90% of sent products were defective. If they were not defective, they often must been edited with extra work. One piece flow system had been rubbish naturally when supplier hadn’t sent products two weeks. WIP was waiting to supplier and employees were producing other products.

The solution of this problem is giving up cheap but bad suppliers and finding new long-term suppliers through targets and strategies.

I just finished the Lean Turnaround book. I write also another lack I saw after book. There was always a repeated thing in the book: CEO must be attend to lean studies. The book also refers that one of the two biggest mistakes is leadership lack in lean studies’ failure. I never saw CEO of the company in factory, company, at the meals or anywhere when I work. He was maybe in other departments or on production’s different floors but at least he would been attended to some lean studies when Mr. Durmuşoğlu comes.

Another lacks can be written also but these are some examples I wonder that why they are not solved. This is also the question that I always wonder during 5 months: I can see these lacks and I know the solutions although I am an unexperienced engineer. How can’t managers and engineers see and if they see how can’t they find a solution? Speaking from outside is maybe easy. Solving a problem is not easy as seem.  Not finding solutions to problems is very irrational for me now. I can probably answer this after years. I add an edit below in the future. Let’s see what will be the answer?