Productivity scheme saves KMF a record £530K
The Productivity Share Scheme, run by KMF Precision Sheet Metal, pays out an annual bonus to any employee who spots an opportunity for cost saving within the KMF Group.
The programme concentrates on the seven key areas of waste; overproduction, inventory, transport, process, idle time, operator motion and quality and aims to bring continuous improvement to the manufacturing operations at the KMF sheet metal engineering plants.
A total of 194 employees contributed to the cost-saving scheme this year resulting in total PSS7 saving for the KMF Group of £530,589.26.
Sam Dutton, KMF Productivity Scheme Administrator, is responsible for organising the initiative. He said: "PSS7 has seen KMF's greatest ever cost saving and we have had more qualified entrants than ever before.
Our employees are our greatest asset and have the best understanding of our processes and how they can be improved. I am confident that our initiative will continue to grow and we will see even more innovative cost-saving ideas next year!".
One successful implementation of this year's ideas is that of KMF employee, Brian Marshall. Working within the KMF Metal Forming department, Brian was tasked to carry out a 32-step bend, for eight variations of a customer-specific product. This meant that the set-up time for the job was significant.
In order to improve the efficiency of this operation, Brian developed a universal programme for the part, which automatically calculated the 32 bend dimensions for each racking unit from the first set of bend measurements.
This innovative idea saved three hours of setting up time, every time this metal product is fabricated. Brian received a special recognition award for the 'Best Idea' of PSS7.
PSS7 is also unique in that it is the first-time KMF Precision Sheet Metal has extended this project across the group to include KMF Precision Engineering. This year's taster scheme resulted in £31,793.20 worth of savings from 30 contributors.
Ashley Key, an employee of KMF Precision Engineering, implemented a trolley style system to give better utilisation of oil giving KMF Precision Engineering both a cost-saving and some health and safety improvements.
Since 2013, the productivity share scheme has saved KMF over £1.8 million and, with the help of KMF Continuous Improvement Team Leader, Dianne Hibell, has significantly increased efficiency and productivity within the KMF sheet metal fabrication service.