From Backlog to Flow: Tackling Setup Waste in a Critical Lathe Operation
Mike Beauregard, Senior Consultant at DPA
The Situation
A large manufacturer and distributor of water flow products faced growing pressure to improve delivery performance. Customer demand was strong, but the horizontal lathe area had become a bottleneck. Aging equipment, long and inconsistent setup times, scattered materials, and a lack of standard work were all contributing to missed schedules and rising backlogs.
New lathes were coming, but management knew that waiting six to twelve months for new equipment wasn’t an option. Productivity had to improve now. To address this, the company partnered with Daniel Penn Associates (DPA) to conduct a focused, weeklong Kaizen event on the lathe operation.
The event was facilitated by Mike Beauregard, Senior Consultant at DPA, who guided the company’s Kaizen team through Lean fundamentals, hands-on observation, and rapid experimentation/improvement.
Goals
The team aligned on a clear set of goals for the week, including reducing lathe setup times significantly through workflow and material flow improvements in the lathe area. They focused on reducing operator travel and searching, improving organization and visual control, all while maintaining a strong focus on safety. These efforts laid the groundwork for the future equipment replacements.
The primary goal was to increase productivity by one-quarter. Part of the effort to achieve this was the need to reduce the lathe setup time from an average of 75 minutes per setup to 15–20 minutes, while also standardizing the process.
The Challenges
Early observations confirmed what operators already felt every day:
- Excessive walking to retrieve prints, jaws, gauges, and approvals was losing valuable time.
- Materials were being stored in multiple locations across the facility.
- The lathe process setups were frequently interrupted to find people or retrieve information, tooling, and equipment.
- Machinists were using different setup approaches. There was no consistent prioritization of jobs and sequencing. Operators had to contend with old lathes with no regular PM, while new machines were months from delivery.
These lathe area inefficiencies also created downstream issues, impacting milling and powder coating operations and increasing energy consumption.
Requirements
For improvements to stick, the team agreed that solutions had to be practical for the machinists. Teams needed to be able to work with the current equipment while waiting for new machines. To achieve consistent, sustainable results, standard work and training had to be established. Solutions had to be implemented quickly while improving safety.
Kaizen Objectives to Remove Waste
With guidance from Daniel Penn, the team set Kaizen-specific objectives. They had to make waste visible during setup, separate internal from external setup work, standardize setup methods, improve layout and staging to reduce motion and waiting, and establish clear feedback loops between machining and engineering.
Approach
The week followed a classic Kaizen structure, including lean training and setup-reduction concepts, as well as direct observation of a full lathe setup and video analysis. To identify wastes in motion, waiting, searching, and rework, the team walked the lathe process and the surrounding areas. From these actions, they quickly generated and prioritized improvement ideas—including those that could be implemented immediately—and created an action plan for the remaining items.
Because the team represented multiple perspectives, from machining to material handling to engineering and administration, they were able to come up with solutions that were truly cross-functional.
Problem Identification
The team’s setup video and observations were eye-opening.
Searching for information or people took up more than 20 minutes of a 77-minute setup. Operators repeatedly left the machine to locate jaws, gauges, prints, or engineering input. Critical dimensions were not always clearly identified on prints. Jaw adjustments had to be repeated for front and rear setups. Thread dialing required multiple trial cuts. Quality inspection time and tool changes were not factored into setup expectations
It became clear that the biggest enemy wasn’t machining; it was the lack of readiness.
Improvement Ideas
The team generated a strong set of practical ideas. These included placing tablets at or near machines for digital access to prints and work instructions. Kitted jobs will be delivered from a tool crib to a defined staging area. FIFO job lanes will be placed along the department’s perimeter. Jobs will be grouped to minimize changeovers. The lathe area will be reorganized and cleaned (5S). They will create standard setup sheets and document best practices. To reduce full tear-downs before each setup, two dedicated tool sets for smaller lathes will be added. At-machine inspection will be established to confirm critical dimensions. Critical dimensions will be clearly identified on prints. A preventative maintenance (PM) plan for lathes will be established.
Actions Taken During the Week
The team immediately made several changes to the lathe area. They:
- Improved the layout for incoming new lathes, eliminating overlapping safety zones for better parts and labor movement.
- Defined and set up a staging area for incoming material and kits.
- Updated lists of jaws and special gauges to support a future tool crib.
- Created a machinist feedback form for engineering for setup and program improvements.
- Developed the first draft of a standardized lathe setup procedure.
- Identified additional work instructions needed to support consistency.
- Defined PM needed on the lathes.
These actions created momentum and demonstrated that meaningful change could happen quickly.
Setup Time Benefits
Once completed, the planned improvements will drop setup times by 55 minutes, just at the edge of the team’s goal. Operators will be prepared before the machine stops. Parts will be in designated lanes, along with the tooling and gauges required to run the jobs. Searching and walking during setups are dramatically reduced. Fewer adjustments and trial cuts are required. The PM should prevent unplanned downtime caused by breakdowns.
Productivity Benefits
Based on immediate and planned improvements by its Kaizen team, the company projects to produce 6,544 additional parts per year, representing a 32% increase in productivity. On-time delivery will improve as a result of a significant reduction in the backlog. These gains also relieve pressure on the company’s downstream milling and powder coating operations, improving overall flow and energy efficiency.
Next Steps
The team identified clear follow-up actions, including completion of the remaining Kaizen newspaper items. They will finalize and roll out setup procedures with photos and details, and integrate improvements once new machines are installed. A tool crib will be established, and adjacent processes will be relocated to support workflow. Standard work and visual management will be introduced and, once in place, will be continually reinforced.
Lessons Learned
The team closed their productive week with honest reflections. The amount of walking and searching they discovered around the lathe area was far greater than expected. Too much information still lives on paper and in tribal knowledge when digital access would help. Doing Kaizen during major equipment transitions adds complexity. Standardization creates freedom, not restriction. There are simpler, smarter ways to work when waste is exposed
As one participant summarized, “Once we saw the waste, we couldn’t unsee it.”
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For more continuous improvement articles:
- Accountability is a System
- What’s holding you back from operational excellence?
- Hidden Capacity in the Curing Process
- The Power of Intentionality: How to Sustain Continuous Improvement to Maximize Efficiency