Shun Fujimoto

Shun Fujimoto is the personification of delivering results while enduring the pain. Although Mr. Fujimoto had recently broken his leg and was given a full leg cast from his hip down to his toe, he did not back out of the 1976 Olympics. Rather than waiting 4 years and hoping to compete in 1980, he pushed through and endured the pain. His performance was so remarkable and inspiring, that his team went one to win their gold medal. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq-C5-vIim8]

The pain when I landed was terrible. It brought tears to my eyes. But I did it. I got my gold medal, and now the pain is gone.

Hopefully none of us will ever have a serious leg injury like Mr. Fujimoto but many of us endure what seems painful every single day. If you're working on a difficult problem at work and think it might be better to just give up on it, remember Shun Fujimoto.

5S - II: Selective Soldering Station

We've begun our processes of applying the 5S principles to our entire factory. We're going to take this slow and be methodical about implementing 5S. To begin with, we started at our selective soldering station. This was an obvious fit because things had gotten out of control, as you can see in this picture.

This was in the middle of a changeover, so normally it's not quite so messy, but it makes for a nice dramatic picture. Either way, it certainly wasn't very organized. So we applied the 5S principals. Which are Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. We began with Sort. This basically required us removing everything from the workstation and setting it aside so that we could Shine. Here's a picture in process.

As you can see we completely removed every item from the workstation and you can see the glisten that remains from having washed down the bench really well. You can also see our pegboard that we're about to use to make a shadow board. We mounted the pegboard to the bench and hung all of the tools necessary for this workstation. Once we were happy with our layout we went ahead, traced out each tool, and colored in each area to create a shadow of where each tool belongs. Here's a picture of the result

And in the following picture you can see exactly what happens when one tool is being used.

As you can see, the hot gloves have been removed and their shadow remains on the board, telling the operator exactly what's missing and where it belongs. This is going to save our operators an enormous amount of time. Now they'll have access to all of their necessary tools without having to search for them, and they'll be able to keep their area nice and clean without hardly any effort at all.

This is really exciting stuff for us here at WAi. We're going to go ahead and standardize this type of setup for all of our operations. Surface Mount Technology, SMT Inspection, Automated Thru-Hole Insertion, Hand Insertion, Post Selective Soldering, Board Washing, Post Board Washing, Final Inspection and Shipping. We'll be sure to keep posting pictures and descriptions of our changes.

This Takes Guts

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/14/johnson-penney Now this takes guts. Take on the job as CEO of a decades old corporation and then on day one invest 50 million of your own dollars into the stock of your new company, without the option of selling it for at least six years.

You want to send a message to your investors? You want to send a message to your corporate team? You want to send a message to your employees? This is one hell of a way to send a message. And I think it's loud and clear. "I am all in. And I know it's going to be worth it. So should you"

Seth Godin - Getting Funded Is Not the Same as Succeeding

Getting funded is not the same as succeeding

Seth hits the nail on the head, as usual. When all you worry about is getting financed, what incentive do you have to make a good product or service and take care of your customers? My favorite quote from the article:

I don't care so much how much money you raised, or who you raised it from. I care a lot about who your customers are and why (or if) they're happy.

Quote: Henry Ford

If you think you can do it, or you think you can't do it, you are right - Henry Ford

5S: I

We’re making big changes here at WAi. For a long time WAi has been a great little ‘mom and pop’ electronics manufacturing shop. And that culture is still at the core of everything we do. But we’d like to be the most efficient mom and pop electronics manufacturing shop that anybody has ever seen. That takes some work and we’re excited to get started. First things first though. We need to get organized. For a long time our feeders for our pick and place machine were stacked, one on top of the other. This worked well but made it difficult to find the right parts. So we decided to do something about it. Buy some great carts for Bliss Industries. Even though their carts are a great value (some people consider their products expensive, but when you consider just how well made they are, they’re a bargain) but our feeders are so inexpensive, we couldn’t justify spending the same amount of money storing them as it cost us to buy them. So instead we found a great solution in just machining some MDF. Here is a before pictures of how are feeders were stored.

This worked well enough. But as you can see, there’s no way for us to identify what size each feeder is and whether or not any of them might be broken. We got by, but we knew we could do better. So after putting in our newly machined MDF shelves, here’s what our feeder storage looks like.

Our new setup is so much better. This picture was taken just a few moments before we labeled each shelf and made it clear what size feeders belonged where, as well as labeling a specific shelf for suspect feeders that might not be functioning properly. The center area of our shelves leaves plenty of room for our reel holders to fit in between.

Looking forward to more projects like this, and you can be sure we’ll be posting our before and after pictures for our transition.

Gou the Great Splitting His Empire

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2011/6/9/hon-hai--foxconn-to-split-into-multiple-companies.aspx Split up your empire. Hey it worked for Alexander the Great's empire.

Mass MEP

Mass MEP is a great organization and we’ve had the pleasure of having them spend the day with us today, helping us develop our Value Stream Map. It was a little painful, as we discovered a lot of our issues. But also very exciting because we can finally see areas where we could really improve our process, cut our cycle times, and become more profitable. I wrote down no less than 12 different projects I’d love to get started working on all at once. But of course that’s not possible. So we’ll take one step at a time. First thing’s first, organizing our employees tools. Think “Shadow Board”. I’ll take some before and after pictures and post them on the blog as we get there.

Lean Works: I

This will be an ongoing series of successful lean manufacturing stories, articles, interviews, etc, where domestic manufacturers have implemented lean manufacturing techniques and have been rewarded for their effort. Follow the link below to learn how Vermont Castings won business back from China. My favorite quote from the article

On his first day as the company’s new general manager, Howe noted, he was approached by an employee, who told him, “I have this idea to shorten the time it takes for this job.”

The result, according to Howe, turned an eight-hour process into a 25-minute one.

http://www.ourherald.com/news/2010-05-13/Front_Page/f08.html

Hello

This is the first post for The WAi Blog. This will be a running blog that will be updated daily. It has no specific subject but will generally follow the pattern of things we’re interested in. A post could be about some interesting things happening here at WAi or it could be a quote that we like. Either way, we’ll try to keep it interesting and exciting for anybody interested in getting to know us better. We hope you enjoy reading these posts. We’re excited to write them. We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time but ultimately “never got around to it”. Finally, after I (Chris Denney) read a recent book called “Do the Work ” by Steven Pressfield, I was supremely inspired by the forward, written by Seth Godin.

Right there, in your driveway, is a really fast car. Not one of those stupid Hamptons-style, rich guy, showy cars like a Ferrari, but an honest fast car, perhaps a Suburu WRX. And here are the keys. Now go drive it.

Right there, on the runway, is a private jet, ready to fly you where you want to go. Here’s the pilot, standing by.

Go. Leave.

Right there, in your hand, is a Chicago Pneumatics 0651 hammer. You can drive a nail through just about anything with it, again and again if you choose. Time to uses it.

And here’s a keyboard, connected to the entire world. Here’s a publishing platform you can use to interact with just about anyone, just about any time, for free. You wanted a level playing field, one where you have just as good a shot as anyone else? Here it is. Do the work.

- Seth Godin

And he’s absolutely right. I have a keyboard and a connection to nearly half the world’s population. So it’s about time we start sharing our thoughts on business, manufacturing, electronics… anything that interests us. We hope you enjoy.