New Touch Technologies Cutting

An industry leader, New Touch Technologies Cutting is widely known for high quality laser cutting and marking, and for its extensive fabrication and finishing services. The company employs some 60 staff at factories in Bayswater and Clayton South in Victoria and operates six machines 24 hours a day. New Touch was achieving increased sales and rapid growth but realised that waste and overtime were also growing.

Project statistics

Project challenge

The challenge included Identifying waste in machine time and reducing increasing overtime that could be eliminated through the application of lean tools.

Location

Melbourne, Victoria

Requirements

The company was considering the purchase of additional machines but turned to Vative to see if Lean manufacturing could increase capacity on its existing production line to improve overall efficiencies.

Approach

Vative implemented a formal 12-month Lean program that enabled New Touch Technologies Cutting to establish and implement its Lean manufacturing processes. 5S (Sort, Set, Shine, Standardise Sustain) workplace organisation was introduced, machine utilisation was improved and delivery performance increased markedly.

Result

Shortly after commencing its Lean manufacturing project with Vative, New Touch Technologies Cutting experienced its biggest sales month on record. Two months later, it broke the record again, with delivery performance at record highs and overtime at record lows. Delivery performance went from 60 per cent of jobs being completed on time (or earlier) to upwards of 90 per cent.

Solution

Vative implemented a formal 12-month Lean program that enabled New Touch to establish and embed its Lean manufacturing processes. 5S (Sort, Set, Shine, Standardise Sustain) workplace organisation was introduced, machine utilisation was improved, and delivery performance increased markedly.

Completion

The value stream mapping implemented by Vative tracked New Touch Technologies Cutting’s processes from the time of order receipt to order dispatch. This established an average job cycle on a machine for about four hours. This was a significant positive change in reducing time for the company which formerly took two days to get an order onto a machine. Doubling up was eliminated, lead times were cut and cumbersome processes were streamlined to benefit the company in the long-term.

“Vative were amazing to deal with. They applied their skill sets and knowledge and have really helped us so we can take what we have learned about implementing Lean and 5S for many years to come.” – Brad Drury, Managing Director, New Touch Technologies