Started our new fiscal year and my goal is to get our engineering process dialed in. We’ve got our implementation of V6 mostly complete but how people use it and the process they go through to be successful still needs to be finalized. So, I’m practicing my lean techniques and going to the Gemba. For the next couple of months I will be sitting with our draftsmen and watching and updating our processes.My first project is Kaiser San Mateo. We had built our elevations in V6 and used these to create our shop drawings. There were numerous changes to the project. So we had to update all of the V6 elevations, create the glass takeoff, molded corner gasket takeoff and miscellaneous takeoff as well as fabrication drawings for 2 different systems.
We started last week. It took about 1.5 days to update all of the elevations. Almost every dimension had changed as well as some of the parts and some captured mullions are now structurally glazed. We then completed the glass, gasket and misc. takeoffs in 2 days. We started on fabrication drawings for the first system on Monday and we should be complete tomorrow.
What I’m finding is that while you can do everything inside of V6, it may not be the most productive thing. Adding milling ops, butt lines and job specific items to the assemblies can be complex and time consuming. Some of these things can be done faster outside of the program. We’re making great progress on this project and I’m learning a lot. I’m hoping to get involved in a new project next so we can work through all of the process.
October 10, 2010
