UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 26, 2016. Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s Electromachine now needs 5.5% less time to get its electric motors assembled, and this at the same cost, the corporation’s press service refers to head of Lean Production Group Denis Akmedyanov as saying.

The enterprise introduced a lean production committee, chaired by Electromachine Director-General Igor Afanasiev, in February 2016. Meetings are held directly on production sites, including Building 16 in March, Building 4 in April, and Building 6 in May. The agenda of these meetings covered the launch of the 5S system, pull-type supply chain model, and the SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) method on the sites.

Additionally, a working team from the Conditioner Department, headed by foreman Nikolai Kozhev, managed to apply standardized work principles to the production of its electric motor; as a result, ten out of thirty-eight production steps got improved and the assembly time dropped from 36 minutes and forty-five seconds to thirty-four minutes and forty-two seconds (-5.5%), which is a very impressive achievement given that no additional costs are involved, Akhmedyanov points out.