Deckhouse modules · Korea · 2003–2005
Shin-Han Machinery: one deck a day, for a deckhouse workload 1.8 times the year before
Twenty-nine deckhouses were due in a year after sixteen had filled the plant. The answer was four words every team could act on each morning: one deck, a day.
- Shin-Han Machinery
- Onsan, Ulsan, Korea
- Deckhouse modules for Korean shipyards
- Suh Wan-Chul, an executive of the Shinhan group and head of innovation planning, before he joined Proper Mediation Inc.
- Company records of Shin-Han Machinery, 2003–2005; The Heartbeat of the Shipyard
The situation
Shin-Han Machinery, founded in Ulsan in 1990, built ship components for Korean and Japanese shipbuilders: deckhouse modules, curved blocks and rudders, alongside equipment for steel plants. Suh Wan-Chul’s lecture record describes it as the second-largest deckhouse maker in the world.
In 2003 it delivered sixteen deckhouse sets with its plant at full capacity. Twenty-nine were due in 2004, 1.8 times as many, and in early December 2003 the deliveries due in January were already three to four weeks late.
What changed, in order
Autumn 2003
BEST Shinhan: preparing the ground
The company’s management innovation programme, BEST Shinhan, began in September 2003 with a diagnosis, training and quick wins on the floor, run by a secretariat reporting directly to the president. Suh Wan-Chul went on to lead its innovation planning.
Early December 2003
Thirty minutes of arithmetic
How many decks in the twenty-nine deckhouses? Two hundred and thirty. How many working days next year? About two hundred and fifty. Then one deck a day would do, with twenty days to spare.
December 2003 – January 2004
One rhythm for engineering, procurement and production
Every discipline was set to the same daily unit: one deck of drawings, one set of cut pieces, one pallet of pipe spools, one block. A single chart fixed each step a set number of days before or after production. By the end of January the late deliveries were back on schedule.
2004
TACT in the plant
The hull shop moved to a one-day TACT, one block a day, with outfitting synchronised to it and later trades organised by zone. On the model ship the deckhouse lead time fell from 60–70 days to 45. By July the standard was 45 days for a six-level deckhouse and 55 for an eight-level one.
July 2004
The result shared
Fourteen deckhouses had been delivered by the end of July. Profit ran above target, and a first-half bonus was paid to all 414 employees. The company’s year-end address recorded a large rise in productivity, profit above target and the bonus paid.
One deck a day: the path of deck B10
EngineeringProcurement and supplyProduction
The people: from blaming to helping
Before the rule, people spent their days checking whether the step before them was ready and complaining when it was not. With one deck a day, they trusted the step before, prepared for the next day and learned what the step after them needed.
½the internal phone calls, once every team knew what the day required
5–6subcontractors in final outfitting completing one deck a day together, passing the work between them
170people in deckhouse outfitting in early 2004: 137 from subcontractors and 33 of the company’s own
414employees who shared the first-half bonus of 2004, 810,000 won each
Results
| Indicator | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Deckhouse sets in the year | 16 (2003) | 29 due (2004) |
| Deliveries due in January 2004 | 3–4 weeks late | On schedule |
| Deckhouse lead time, model ship | 60–70 days | 45 days |
| Internal phone calls | Constant | Halved |
| Deckhouse productivity, by May 2005 | — | +50% or more |
| Deckhouse lead time, by May 2005 | — | Halved |
Volumes, the January recovery and phone calls from Suh Wan-Chul’s lecture record. Lead times from the company’s innovation reports of February and July 2004; productivity and lead time to May 2005 from its innovation submission of that month.
What lasted
45 / 55 daysstandard lead time for six- and eight-level deckhouses, set in July 2004
1 dayTACT, one block a day, carried into the company’s curved-block plant in 2005
“Each worker knew without ambiguity what the day required, and felt, each evening, the satisfaction of a thing finished.”