Goulds Pumps Wins With Six Sigma

Company Profile
Goulds Pumps has supplied the global market with high-quality chrome and stainless steel pumping products for over 150 years. With over one million installed process pumps in service, they are the dominant brand worldwide. 

Situation
According to Leon Jurgill, Six Sigma Black Belt, the company was pursuing Lean Manufacturing to reduce lead-time and costs, and improve quality. They just needed help implementing it. One of the areas they wanted to focus on was the production of stainless steel castings, which directly affects on-time pump shipments to customers throughout the world. 

Solution
Knowing the Manufacturers Resource Center (MRC) offered Lean Manufacturing assistance, Leon contacted MRC's Dick Donati. "He was the facilitator we needed," says Leon. "He helped with a lot of internal training." Under Dick's expert guidance, a Value Stream Mapping team evaluated the stainless steel casting process and found the Air-arc operation to be particularly problematic. During the Air-arc process, gates and risers are removed from stainless steel castings by using a hand-held "Air-arc" torch, which utilizes hi-voltage electric current and compressed air. This required a considerable amount of overtime and was causing a work-in-process bottleneck. Subsequently, an Air-arc Kaizen team was formed, which incorporated individuals from both the shop and the office. Their main objectives were to increase productivity (throughput) and eliminate the bottleneck. Over the course of the five-day Kaizen event, the team implemented several Lean concepts, including line-balancing, one-piece flow, work-cell design, 5S, visual controls and TPM. Needless to say, the "redesigned" process was a complete success.

Results
Total cost savings for this project exceeded $140,000 per year. The bottleneck was completely eliminated, which resulted in a 100% decrease in WIP before the Air-arc operation. The improved process also decreased overall required WIP space by 42% and reduced the average cost per piece by 50%.

Testimonial
"Even successful businesses can be improved upon with a few Lean Manufacturing techniques. This Kaizen was very successful," says Leon, "and we have many more Kaizen events planned."

Leon Jurgill
Six Sigma Black Belt