PVA | Automotive Manufacturing Management Case Study

Reduce operational costs in all 5 plants.
Re-enforce industry standards and their application on the production floor.
Training and on-the-floor performance coaching of the front-line Supervisors related to their roles and responsibilities, focusing on a more pro-active management style.
Fine-tuning of the current standard operating procedures (SOP’s) with the employees and Supervisors on-the-floor.
Enhancing the timeliness and effectiveness of communication between the Supervisors and their employees.
Developing a material awareness program to reduce material waste and scrap levels.
Implementing a uniform Management Operating System (MOS) across all plants.

Opportunity time built into labor activity compared to machine time cycles.
Excessive response time of mechanics when there was downtime on the equipment.
Standard cycle times on equipment have opportunity time built into them.
Crewing requirements were not based on the number of machines running.
High level of rejects on the paint lines resulted in rework and low levels of customer satisfaction.
Lost capacity on the racks of the paint lines.
Ineffective balancing of the workload between the employees working in all of the production cells.
Machine operators were not paying attention to their machines when they were running.
There were no goals or objectives set at any time by the Supervisors with their employees with regards to the work at hand related to quality, cost, schedule attainment, etc.
Supervisors do not follow-up during the shift with their employees to identify variances to plan in terms of cost of operation and production volumes.
Supervisors generally let production follow its course, leaving the employees to manage the process themselves and at their own pace.

Improved the structure of the communication flow across departments to coordinate increased volume throughput across all areas.
Involved all Managers and Supervisors in the design and implementation of new elements to their existing Management Operating Systems (MOS) to secure their ownership of those changes.
Focused the training and on-the-floor performance coaching to motivation and positive communication with all the Supervisors and Managers with their employees.
Increased the levels of pro-active supervision based on setting and following-up on work activity expectations with the employees.
Drove the attainment and perpetuation of results through Plant Manager leadership sessions during every aspect of the project.
Provided the Plant Managers with the structured and timely information they required to monitor and follow-up on both the Management Operating Systems compliance and the attainment of production results.
Improved the levels of overall employee skills and work activity flexibility.
Developed and implemented a “best practice” approach for set-ups and change-overs.

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Some significant results obtained by our Client included:

Automotive Supervisory Activities

4% 0% 35% 16% 45%

40% 17% 23% 10% 10%

We witnessed a 30% improvement from earned hours over hours worked.

Automotive Manufacturing Savings

Client Project Coordinators were trained and certified during the PVA engagement in eachof the five plants.
A quarterly audit program of the new Management Operating Systems was developed for the Coordinators.
PVA conducted audits over 18 months to ensure compliance to the continued utilization of the Management Operating Systems.
These Audits resulted in recommendations and action plans to further identify additional opportunities for improving operations.

AUTOMOTIVE