Business Profile: New Flyer

New Flyer, the Winnipeg-based bus company has started to pave the way to operational excellence with its world-class vision and lean strategy

Lean Enterprise Manager Jim Tingley with Winnipeg Plant Manager Shane Zaeneli in front of an electric bus built by New Flyer. Photo by Shayla McFadyen, courtesy of New Flyer Industries.

Lean Enterprise Manager Jim Tingley with Winnipeg Plant Manager Shane Zaeneli in front of an electric bus built by New Flyer. Photo by Shayla McFadyen, courtesy of New Flyer Industries.

New Flyer Industries is the leading manufacturer of heavy-duty buses in the U.S. and Canada. The Winnipeg-based company has facilities in both Canada and the U.S. and recently purchased intercity coach specialist Motor Coach Industries (MCI). What has made the company’s growth and the recent MCI purchase possible is its dedication to lean principles over the past five-plus years.

Jim Tingley, lean enterprise manager for New Flyer, said the root of this successful turnaround of the company rests on the shoulders of the executive leadership for their active support and buy in. A new company president & CEO in 2009 along with the addition of experienced EVP Operations, VP Manufacturing and VP Quality combined with the legacy leadership team, and tremendous support from the Board of Directors set the stage for the transformation.

Body Construction

New Flyer’s Winnipeg fabrication and assembly facility is a prime example of how the company has found ways to simplify processes to free up floor space and bring more of its production under one roof. The facility supplies most of the primary metal fabricated parts for the buses. This includes flat sheet processing, structural tube laser cutting, forming, and a large weld shop.

The facility assembles fully painted bus shells for the company – about 40 per cent of a vehicle is completed when it leaves Winnipeg for Crookston, Minn., where final assembly is completed. Most of the interior except for the seats is assembled in Winnipeg as well. Engine and transmission assembly is done in the U.S. to meet Buy American legislation requirements. With a customer base that is 80 to 90 per cent U.S. transit companies, the company finds that this division of labour is essential. Two other New Flyer full assembly plants are located in the U.S. as well.

The Winnipeg facility completes about 18 bus shells in one week. Each bus stops at approximately 35 stations along one production line for its gradual completion. Previously two lines snaked through the full length of the facility, and the buses stopped at each station for just over four hours. Process improvements have now made it possible to run only one assembly line. Now the buses stop at each station for two hours, and the line speed has doubled. It’s only when the buses move into the painting area that they go into a two-line configuration to maintain the speed of production. That is just one example of how the company has freed up more space to accommodate more primary processing on the shop floor.

Operational Excellence Steps

“The operational excellence journey is based on providing a safe, clean, and efficient working environment for all employees; waste reduction and making exceptions visible,” said Tingley. “At the start of our lean journey, the facility was quite dirty and we weren’t running an efficient plant. But within a few years it became apparent that we were really turning things around.”

The first thing the company tackled in the process was 5S, essentially getting rid of all the personal tools and toolboxes around the shop and standardizing everything necessary at each station.

New Flyer’s Livebus system makes it easier for the assembly team to understand exactly what is required in each build. Photo by Walter Janzen.

New Flyer’s Livebus system makes it easier for the assembly team to understand exactly what is required in each build. Photo by Walter Janzen.

“We started at the beginning of the assembly line and every two to three weeks we would move on to the next station,” recalled Tingley. “It came to a point that people further down the line were asking, ‘When are you getting to me?’ And kudos go to the production workforce and leadership teams who managed and sustained the change.”

The weld shop is another area where space and time efficiencies have been created.

“In our weld shop we switched from a point-of-use to a kitting system,” Tingley explained. “A kit comes preloaded with only the components that are required for a particular fixture. Depending on the day’s schedule, that kit may contain components for completely different bus models. Everything the welder needs to complete the subassembly is in the kit and is delivered right to their station.”

When New Flyer made this process adjustment, it freed up about 5,000 square feet of floor space.

“The team found a few extra buses’ worth of inventory during the changeover,” Tingley noted. “If you ask anyone involved in the weld kitting initiative, most will state it was one of the most challenging initiatives and stretched the team to the limits, but it was the right thing to do.

“It also freed up enough space for the installation of a tube bender for structural steel tubing, so we brought that work in-house.”

Assembly Flexibility

With all of the work that it has reclaimed, New Flyer has been able to stabilize the assembly line, and it is much more flexible in the way it processes orders.

“Every order is custom-built to meet the needs of each property,” said Tingley. For example, a certain transit authority might want a particular type of air conditioning system on its buses and have interior cameras with audio set up in certain places. They want buses that look and react exactly like the current buses in their fleet. The challenge was that if the customer requested a change in their order or a supplier ran into a component issue, the line could be affected. “Our facility and systems weren’t dynamic enough to manufacture more than two or three different customer contracts on line in one week. Today corporately we have had weeks with more than 30 contracts on line at once. Today most customers don’t want to accept 20 buses a week; they can’t bring them into service that fast.

“A few years ago we installed our proprietary Livebus system, which provides information to our assembly line installers,” said Tingley. “We’ve gone from a printed bill of materials that was essentially a manual book to an online system where our employee receives and transacts built status information on each install using a PC. This also gives us the ability to communicate to the installers when there’s an engineering change, additional quality check, or other specific requirement on a particular model.”

Responsive Management

The andon system the company has installed also allows installers to quickly communicate with the cell team when they require assistance. A light flashes above their station when they activate the system and specially trained responders react promptly.

“If an installer requires support, the response team has five minutes; anything longer than that and the call is escalated to the next level of management, up to the plant manager,” explained Tingley. “The installer is the only one who can turn the system off. If they’re satisfied with the response, they swipe their card and the event is over. All of these incidents are tracked, and an analyst goes through the data and evaluates where our top opportunities are. He works with the area teams to run kaizen events to drive improvements. Depending on the issue we may include our other departments or even suppliers.”

Working on a customer’s product on a more regular basis, even if in small numbers, has the added benefit that installers come to recognize each product more readily.

“Most of our installers comment on changes that customers have made to their orders over time,” noted Tingley. “That shows how knowledgeable and engaged our production team is with the work that they do.”

Total Productive Maintenance

The kitting of jobs and organization of tools and part flow has also freed up a lot of warehouse space – three warehouses’ worth, in fact. New Flyer refers to the warehouse area as “the bowling alley” because it’s more common to see materials moving along it than sitting on shelves.

“We currently have five days’ worth of supply in our facility,” said Tingley. “Larger components are delivered just-in-time. The supply team has spent a great deal of effort working with our suppliers to reduce inventory levels despite the high level of mix modeling.”

Assembly runs on one shift; primary fabricating runs three shifts and provides parts to all of New Flyer’s plants. The weld department is on two shifts.

Lean, of course, is a journey without an end point. Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) does an annual lean assessment at the New Flyer facility, and over the years it has had to change the goalposts to suit the sophistication of the company’s development.

“We have trained a lot of our staff using CME,” Tingley said. “They’ve helped us streamline our operations and establish best practices.”

These best practices include a total productive maintenance program in the primary areas. Work centres have unique cards that outline tasks that need to be performed on that piece of equipment each day. If the card is facing red side out, the operator does the tasks listed on it and then turns it over. If a machine has a problem, the operator will orient the card to make it visible and log the issue on the PC at his station so that it can be acted upon. The preventive maintenance becomes a habit, and the operator gets to know the machines he works at better.

There are a variety of other ways that New Flyer works to keep its teams engaged in operations every day, including a daily “huddle board” stand-up meeting to review the previous day’s work and prepare for the day at hand; a weekly KPI review to drive production; and a weekly 5S audit system.

The latter is a 10 to 15-minute audit carried out by a group of trained auditors, half of whom are from the plant areas and half of whom are office staff.

“The 5S audits are carried out to find opportunities,” Tingley stressed. “It’s helpful to have ‘outside eyes’ looking at an area. Often when you spend significant time in the same location, you don’t see the details. If you walk by something 100 times, you don’t notice it after a while. There are 75 areas on the shop floor that are audited regularly. Twenty-four hours after the audit is submitted, the team is expected to correct any opportunities on the audit list. If they can’t be done in that time, a plan has to be created with a completion date to make the corrections.”

With these initiatives in place, in addition to the andon system, Tingley noted that about 80 to 90 per cent of issues get resolved by the team in their own area, and that’s what New Flyer wants to see.

Editor Robert Colman can be reached at rcolman@canadianfabweld.com.

New Flyer Industries Canada ULC, 204-224-1251, www.newflyer.com

 

Meeting New Manganese Requirements

Like all companies with large welding facilities in Canada, New Flyer is working to better manage its manganese emissions. The first step on that journey has already been completed: The welding operations have been enclosed and separately ventilated, and anyone working or entering the weld shop is equipped with personal protective equipment (PPE).

However, PPE can be cumbersome to don every day, and New Flyer wants to ensure their staff is both safe and comfortable, so a number of other approaches to fume management are currently in the works.

“With the weld area now enclosed, we were able to determine more easily the concentration of manganese in the shop,” said Jessie Nacar, manufacturing engineering technician with the weld cell team. “We have now prepared a phase two project, which will upgrade the ventilation to include 16 exhaust fans, which will increase the air exchanges. If that turns out to be insufficient, we will increase it yet again.”

In the process, the team will be lowering the stack vents to floor level so that fresh air enters the space at a low level and circulates fumes up to the ceiling.

The team is not limiting itself to air exchange, however. They are also looking into changing their weld process from conventional welding to pulse welding, introducing low-manganese wire, and acquiring on-gun extraction systems to help minimize fumes right at the source. As Nacar noted, it’s a step-by-step process and will take time to perfect.

 

Fabricating Efficiencies

Pictured here is one of three tube cutting lasers at New Flyer that have helped to boost the productivity of the shop.

“We used to run high-capacity production band saws alongside 13 drill presses,” said Jim Tingley, lean enterprise manager. “We had three shifts just drilling half-inch holes, which are common in the structural material we produce. The tube lasers have provided so much more flexibility in our manufacturing. We were able to reduce some of our tooling and design in such a way that it simplifies welding processes as well.”

New Flyer also has four flat sheet laser cutting systems, three of which have sheet loading capabilities and can run lights-out. The fourth is used for prototyping and rush jobs.

About the Author
Canadian Fabricating & Welding

Rob Colman

Editor

1154 Warden Avenue

Toronto, M1R 0A1 Canada

905-235-0471

Robert Colman has worked as a writer and editor for more than 25 years, covering the needs of a variety of trades. He has been dedicated to the metalworking industry for the past 13 years, serving as editor for Metalworking Production & Purchasing (MP&P) and, since January 2016, the editor of Canadian Fabricating & Welding. He graduated with a B.A. degree from McGill University and a Master’s degree from UBC.