Implementation of a Yo-I-Don system for the production line timing

Goals

The cabins activity of the Chantiers de l’Atlantique based in St Nazaire must face increased production demand given the success of cruises and the recognized competence of the Chantiers de l’Atlantique in this field.

The organisation must therefore improve the visibility of real-time production information and synchronize the line timing.

Challenges

In order to absorb this growth in production, the Chantiers de l’Atlantique embarked on a digitization plan and wanted to acquire a digital visual management tool for monitoring activities and real-time flows.

Given the typology of assembly lines with cabins placed on trays that advance manually at each end of takt time, CDA has been interested in the Yo-I-Don system of Pingflow that was established at its supplier ALTOR industry in Clisson (manufacturer of sanitary blocks).

Solutions

• The Yo-I-Don solution offered by Pingflow uses tablets that are assigned to each workstation. These tablets allow operators to report their end of work, report and qualify blocking or non-blocking incidents.
• Large monitors have been arranged in the workshop so that all operators have access to the real-time informationof the activity and for monitoring the rate.
• The system is connected to the ERP to provide the forecast production film of the day and receive a history of the actual activity.
• The Andon system allows visible alerts on the screens and the sending of notification via SMS and email. If the incidents are not taken into account within a defined period of time, an escalation can warn others.
• A web interface allows the system configuration (working hours, profiles and user contact details) and to view incidents in the form of logs and graphics.

Progress of the project:

For the project, a multidisciplinary working group was set up. In this group, there was a contact person for each department involved in defining the system: IT, production and method. Pingflow had a project manager.

• After a study phase of the current and future joint organisation, a functional analysis was carried out for the description of the system.
• A platform has been created to put the situation before deployment and validate the main technical and functional points.
• The start-up and training of the staff was very fast over a week. The first results appeared from the 3rd week with a productivity increase of 15%  of which 10% thanks to this digital Andon system. Responsiveness has also naturally improved for flow synchronization and incident response.

Results

Upon commissioning, Mr. Nicolas CLISSON, Production Manager and Mr. François ROBIC, Methods Manager noted various gains:

• Greater serenity and fluency in the workshop.
• Collective communication allows the natural self-organization of the teams and allows the mastery to raise its head.
• Real time also requires a certain rigour which has been immediately beneficial on quality improvement.
• Prior to commissioning, the first positive feedback was provided during the functional analysis of the system, as this allowed the correct questions to be asked regarding the operating modes to be adopted for the line.

Future expectations related to the use of the system over time relate to the analysis of the performance recorded by the system to further improve the organisation of workstations and optimize the time methods.

Conclusion

This project was a success for the Atlantic Shipyards and the decision was made to deploy the system on the other assembly lines.