Blocks and deckhouses · Lithuania · 2005–2006
Baltija Shipyard: 75 percent more output from the same workshops, without new investment
The yard’s plan for the year said its workload had grown by more than half and the factory had to be extended. Instead, the same workshops were given a beat.
- Baltija Shipyard
- Klaipėda, Lithuania
- Deckhouses and curved blocks for the Odense Steel Shipyard group
- Suh Wan-Chul, Partner, C.H. & Partners Ltd., before he joined Proper Mediation Inc.
- Observation report and visit records, Odense Steel Shipyard group, 2005–2006
The situation
Baltija Shipbuilding Yard in Klaipėda was one of the group yards of Odense Steel Shipyard, alongside Volkswerft Stralsund in Germany and Loksa in Estonia. It supplied curved blocks and deckhouses to the group’s docks.
The observation of February 2005 found workshops fully occupied and fully manned, a complicated production flow, assembly procedures that were not standardised, and a crowded, unsafe working environment. A deckhouse took six to eight months to produce. The workforce was positive and spirited, but unskilled.
What changed, in order
February 2005
The diagnosis: one target for the yard
The observation report on the Odense group, presented on 28 February 2005, set Baltija a single aim: blocks completed fully outfitted and painted, ready for erection at the receiving yard without further work, and productivity up 30 percent.
20 June 2005
A production system instead of a new factory
The yard presented a workload up by more than half and a case for extending the factory. Suh Wan-Chul proposed checking it again, and with a Baltija working group recalculated the year’s volume against the existing workshops. Deck panels and regular blocks went to flow lines, walls and bulkheads to a short line of their own, irregular blocks to batch production, and grand assembly to workstations by deck level.
July – August 2005
TACT goes live
The new system began operating in July. By August the yard had fixed its lines: four workstations for deck panels and five for regular blocks, each moving on a TACT of one shift.
June 2005 – February 2006
Curved blocks: the yard’s own action plan
A Baltija team showed it could cut curved-block throughput time by about 20 percent and wrote an action plan in October 2005. By February 2006 the block-assembly layout had been opened up for people, utilities and materials, the labour situation had stabilised, and 77 items were solved, 4 cancelled and 32 still open.
September 2006
Running to the beat
At the eighth visit the yard’s management described what TACT asked of them: work that was not finished properly showed up at once, and the system pushed harder than they had expected. The next level, they said, was finishing every job completely. The deckhouse of the L211 series, redesigned for production with Odense’s design office from the end of 2005, was due in early 2007: ten decks instead of eleven, corrugated walls and more standard blocks.
Deckhouse lines, August 2005
Deck panelsT/T 1 shift · C/T 4 shifts
Regular blocksT/T 1 shift · C/T 5 shifts
Walls and bulkheadsT/T 1 shift · C/T 1 shift
Irregular blocks—
The people: “everything is transparent”
The system was designed with the yard, not handed to it. A working group of Baltija’s own engineers and production leaders studied the volume, drew the lines and then ran them. When Suh Wan-Chul returned about half a year after TACT began, it was the yard’s own people who reported the results.
6members of the Baltija working group that designed the deckhouse system in June 2005
30%productivity target set for the yard at the February 2005 diagnosis
20Baltija workers placed at Odense in November 2005, as the group shared its labour
Results
| Indicator | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Annual output (tonnes) | 32,000 (2003) | 55,400 (2006) |
| New facilities | Extension planned | None |
| Curved-block action items, February 2006 | 113 raised | 77 solved, 4 cancelled |
Output figures from Suh Wan-Chul’s lecture record, which states the increase as 75 percent without investment. Action items from the Odense group’s Constant Improvement report, March 2006.
What lasted
65,000 ta year: the capacity the yard stated in September 2006, with painting and cutting as the remaining bottlenecks
1 shiftTACT on the deck-panel and regular-block lines, the beat the yard kept from 2005
“I didn’t know that TACT had such a strong driving force hidden in it.”