Guest Editorial 3 | Taking Lean Manufacturing to the Next Level

Take a moment and consider society’s increasing infatuation with fitness. We think about losing bulk, building muscle, increasing speed and stamina – becoming lean.

Engineers apply the same mentality to create lean production. Like the lean ideology we apply to ourselves, lean manufacturing often results in becoming smaller. By applying the “less is more” mentality, activities that do not provide value are removed from manufacturing processes, moving production lines faster and more efficiently – ultimately providing customers with high quality, specially configured products with short lead times.

Lean manufacturing isn’t a new concept. Originally designed by Toyota¹ in the 1930s, it shifts the focus of the manufacturing engineer from individual machines and their utilization to the flow of the product through the total process. This way, it aims to produce more with less at a faster pace, while requiring less rework and waste.

Lean processes are at the heart of most manufacturing facilities worldwide and continue to gain popularity in other industry sectors, such as distribution and financial services. But technology advancements and internet accessibility have required it to move beyond assembly line production and manifest into lean thinking, lean design and lean management.

This rise of the fourth industrial revolution, driven by advances in technology that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds, provides endless possibilities multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics and the Industrial Internet². And while many industries will be impacted by the breadth of these breakthroughs, manufacturing stands to profit immensely. In fact, GE estimates³ that there will be more than 50 billion connected devices by 2020 and that the Industrial Internet could add $15 trillion to global GDP in productivity gains over the next 20 years. This connectivity will contribute to the technological revolution – or fourth industrial revolution – that will disrupt almost every industry worldwide.

Better products delivered faster
Taking a page from its predecessors, the fourth industrial revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life around the world⁴. Though consumers have traditionally gained the most from technology advancements, we will soon see supply-side innovations with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity through a drop in transportation and communication costs, as well as more effective logistics and global supply chains.

GE’s Brilliant Factories⁵, which digitally connect designers, suppliers and production engineers, conceptualize this by bringing the Industrial Internet to Advanced Manufacturing. For example, GE’s new capacitor facility in Clearwater, Flor., illustrates how advanced lean manufacturing has become, where facilities around the world are evolving into Brilliant Factories. The Clearwater capacitor and instrument transformer facility features sensor enabled machines, automated robotics and sophisticated drying ovens that help increase productivity. Its vertically integrated operations also provide for a consistent reduction of lead and cycle times across a wide variety of product configuration.

The connectivity of the Industrial Internet fuels Advanced Manufacturing, equipping machines with sensors that send information about humidity, temperature, dust level and other factors into the data cloud for storage and analysis. GE’s Predix™ Edge software then curates the real-time data to predict outcomes at every stage of the manufacturing cycle, creating a digital thread that connects manufacturing sites and people to customer and community networks throughout the world.

As one of the first sites to embrace this technology, the Clearwater facility has seen a significant reduction in manufacturing time while still possessing enough flexibility to produce various types of capacitors, including high-voltage, direct current (DC) traction and water cooled.

While quality testing has traditionally eliminated defective products, the use of this technology helps determine the likelihood of defects occurring downstream. Proactive steps can then be taken to help ensure quality and throughput. In the past, workers wouldn’t know that anything went wrong in the manufacturing cycle until they tested the device, but Predix™ erases that uncertainty and helps fix suboptimal processes before they become expensive. This data allows for reverse-engineering of these successes to improve processes for the entire production.

Lean manufacturing isn’t solely defined by process improvement – it also helps reduce resource consumption. Though the facility was created through an extension of an existing transformer factory and the consolidation of two larger legacy facilities – increasing its capacity by 35 percent – lean processes have allowed GE to decrease its overall footprint by nearly 60 percent. The Clearwater facility houses a class 1000 clean room, where the main ingredients used in making capacitors are stored and made. In the clean room, factors like humidity, temperature and air quality can be controlled to help eliminate dust and particle contamination from the manufacturing process. All unused materials are also recycled, helping to minimize waste and contribute to a better environment.

Why capacitors?
The capacitors made at the Clearwater facility, which help bring electricity to homes and businesses, are an example of the Industrial Internet’s potential to improve global supply chains, which in turn will supply utilities with these products more efficiently – ultimately helping them provide consumers with a more affordable and reliable power supply. They are used in a range of industries apart from energy, such as railway and induction heating and melting, serving customers from all over the world.

The value capacitors bring to the world is undeniable. In an ideal power system, the power required by end users would equal 100 percent of the generated power, requiring little or no reactive power; however, inductive devices like motors and transformers consume real power, requiring the utility to generate reactive power to send to the end user. This consumes valuable limited transmission capacity, lowers the power factor and significantly reduces efficiency, which increases generation and transmission costs. But with the use of high-voltage capacitor banks, the effects of inductive devices can be diminished by reducing the amount of reactive power flowing through the transmission system. By reducing the need for reactive power, capacitors help to maximize the existing transmission capacity and greatly improve the transmission system’s power factor – improving efficiency and reducing the cost of generation and transmission.

The evolution of the energy industry, including increasing growth of HVDC transmission technology and advanced SVC, will fuel the need for capacitors⁶. In addition, capacitors will be required for reactive power management as renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, continue to gain popularity, creating a need for large-scale grid integration. As more and more societies commit to renewable energy integration, the need and demand for capacitors will continue to grow. And the Clearwater factory is leading the industry by creating a system that produces these products quickly, efficiently and with uncompromising integrity.

About the Author

Alan is the General Manager for Grid Solutions’ Capacitors product line. In this role, he has the responsibility for the profit & loss and product management of the combined $250 million portfolio. He leads teams of enablers, who manufacture and produce capacitors that maximize electrical transmission capacity, improve efficiency as well as reduce the cost of generation and transmission. Alan has nearly 20 years of experience in GE, holding Sales and Quality positions in Industrial Systems Solutions, as well as P&L leadership roles in Engineering Services and Water & Process Technologies. He holds a Six Sigma Black Belt as well as a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University and an MBA from the University of Detroit Mercy.