AG Glass Limited

AG Glass (UK) LTD has been trading since 1985. The principle products are hermetically sealed, double glazed units that are sold to trade.

Background
In order the meet exacting requirements, the company offers a very quick "turn around" from receipt of order, to delivery of approximately three of four days. The company has already earned an excellent reputation for providing a quality product to its customers.

Learning Challenge
The challenge for AG Glass was to reduce waste from the toughening plant and thus increase profitability of the business.

The OLC Solution
A three month programme of technical support, training, and the facilitation of a series of process improvements were made to the methods of operating the toughening plant.

Team working and team developments were central to the project, as the solutions to the problems lay in cross functional activities. The root cause of variation and high levels of rejects from the toughening plant were identified as emanating, in part, from the previous manufacturing process of arissing the glass.

Whilst sustaining improvements in the arissing process which was achieved through the application of internal controls, internal auditing, management review practices and other technical improvements were also achieved in the operations and control of the toughening plant through introducing easy to follow documented procedures.

Course Overview
AG Glass introduced the OLC eight stage improvement methodology and the OLC continuous improvement storyboarding techniques.

Key Interventions:

• Identification of root causes of variation in productivity performance and quality of product
• Adoption of 5S housekeeping and basic daily maintenance activities by operators supported by advanced maintenance from the engineering department
• Internal audit and management review activities aimed at ensuring control and sustainability of improvements

Benefits
AG Glass (UK) Limited has been introduced to cross functional, team based, lean manufacturing techniques, that, after a 6 month project with OLC, will deliver savings of £125,00 per year and reduction in waste to levels less than 3.5% compared to an average of 7% before the programme.

This project has shown that, although AG Glass is already considered by many as "best in class," there is still a great opportunity to increase productivity and profitability through adopting continuous quality improvement techniques.

Results
"Dr Chris Bamber and his team at OLC have facilitated significant benefits to productivity and quality with the use of continuous quality improvement techniques.

The success of this initial programme has shown that we can become world class manufacturers of glass and, with the help of OLC, we now aim to adopt the philosophy of continual quality improvement using project management."
John Spiby, Managing Director