The Power of the Andon – Quality at the Source

In the lean world, the word andon is given to refer to a “signal” for help.  It can be a sign, light, buzzer, or anything that could draw someone’s attention to a problem.  The term is part of a larger belief called “Jidoka”, or, built-in quality.  More on Jidoka in a later blog.

In our lean journey, one of the quickest realizations we’ve come to is how, in a production environment, the pressure seems to always be on the production workers.  “More, faster, now” all seem to be words heard on a daily basis.  We realize the by-product of this tends to be large amounts of In-Process, half-built, or “trouble” units that get put to the side – Sacrificed to the gods of “efficiency” in order to meet specific numbers or required shipments.  But no one ever seems to ask why we have such a build-up of incomplete units until there is no space left.  Then, only when time allows, there is an effort to clean up, finish and fix the accumulated “WIP” that has started to take over a production floor  (Almost like watching mold grow over the area of a piece of bread, in my opinion).

Even more disconcerting is that in this scenario, no one is asking why parts are getting set “off to the side” or what trouble is causing us to stop builds mid-way through.  The attitude of “we’ll get back to it later” permeates a lot of manufacturing because it’s an easy relief valve to the current situation.  Like the old phrase of “staying one step ahead of the authorities”, except in a manufacturing environment it’s more like “staying one step ahead of missed customer shipments”.  Do we ever realize how much quality is being sacrificed?  Why don’t we focus on fixing problems first so that they don’t have the potential to be problems for our customer, or worse, the end customer buying that car, truck, tractor, bulldozer, etc.?

At The Morey Corporation, we’ve created a culture around raising the andon (Signal for help) at the spot of any problem.  Effectively, this means that at any point of a manufacturing operation, if a problem is seen, any operator can “raise the andon” and that production line must shut down.  In our environment, there are andons set up at multiple points down a production line as signs on top of poles.  If there’s a problem, the sign goes up and everyone can see it.  No one can build until the problem is solved.  We have adopted a “Fix it fast and Forever” approach that now puts tension on everyone involved to fix the issue before restarting the line.  Customer orders still need to be filled.  The line still needs to run, but putting things to the side is no longer an allowable practice.  Nothing can happen until the problem’s solved, even if it means operators sit at their station for the rest of the day doing nothing.  The line can only be restarted by the Manufacturing Engineer responsible for the line once the problem has been solved.  This focuses an immediate spotlight on the area of the problem and pulls in a team including the operator who found the problem, the first responder to the problem, the manufacturing engineer, and a myriad of other people that either happen to be in the area or are called in for their expertise.

Effectively, what we have done is to take the pressure that used to be on the production operators, that of the “more, faster, now” variety, and reallocated that pressure to management, engineering and quality.  They now see operators sitting and waiting to restart work and they feel the pressure of getting things right so the operators can do their job instead of just expecting them to overcome issues.  At Morey, the operators have the power and authority to raise the andon for even the slightest issue they see and no one can come tell them that this action wrong – It is actually celebrated.

The end result from this entire change is that we have fixed a mountain of issues in the last year inherent in our manufacturing that had been there for years.  Our operators had learned to overcome issues, but no one ever realized how much just “overcoming” an issue cost us, not only in decreased efficiency, but also in quality.  Our quality, throughput, and efficiencies have all increased, due in part, to this focus on andons and putting the onus of quality at the source of the problem.  Now we are seeing just how well manufacturing can run in this scenario of fixing it fast and forever.  So much so, that we have started to now implement andons in our office environment.  You may think it sounds funny, but I personally, in my departments have seen issues pop up that go back as far as 20 years that we have just learned to live with.  Now that we are exposing them, we are fixing them and making life a whole lot easier on all people involved and enabling us to serve our customers with quality product, rapid response, and competitive cost.

David Seifrid is currently the Manager of Planning and Customer Support at The Morey Corporation.