ABS Progress
Alcoa continues to deploy the Alcoa Business System (ABS) throughout the company. ABS connects Alcoans to customers, each other, and Alcoa processes. ABS is a fully integrated means of achieving continuous improvement in safety, quality, time and cost efficiencies, and customer satisfaction.
Partners in Aerospace
Alcoa’s Lafayette (Ind.) Operations and Boeing formed a team to address manufacturing and delivery specifications. The team created a direct customer-pull connection that enabled them to meet Boeing’s lean manufacturing needs without increasing costs. In 2001, Lafayette raised delivery performance to 100% at Boeing’s largest receiving location for the first time. Enhanced customer service and waste elimination are other benefits.
Tennessee Saves
The Roll Shop at Alcoa’s Tennessee Operations now supplies higher-quality rolls to the Continuous Cold Mill for rolling can sheet. Between May 2001 and the end of the year, the number of defective rolls fell 65%, leading to an 18% increase in the number of feet of aluminum rolled between roll changes over the same period.
The Can Reclamation Department decreased its net melt loss from 4.6% in 2000 to 4.1% in 2001. Each .1% improvement of net melt loss for the year is valued at more than $350,000.
Customer Connection
Alcoa Building Products (ABP) undertook a pilot program with Cassidy Pierce Co. A training program created an ABS-customer relationship that produced striking results: doubling of the customer’s cash flow and inventory turns, a broadened ABP product offering, and improved profit margins.
Wheels in High Gear
Alcoa’s Cleveland (Ohio) Works made impressive improvements in its automobile and truck wheel flowpaths. The auto flowpath has reduced inventories by 70%, scrap by 50%, and process reject rates by as much as 85% – while achieving 100% on-time delivery. The truck flowpath is almost completely linked from suppliers through the wheel line and on to the end customer. Delivery performance went from 88% in 2000 to 99%.
Down with Cap Scrap!
Alcoa CSI North America’s five plants achieved significant performance improvements. They posted aggregated percentage reductions of 42% in customer complaints, 71% in customer claims, 29% in liner scrap, and 35% in poly scrap. Lost workdays fell by 53%, while the plants’ manufacturing productivity index, a measure of operating efficiency, rose 3%. Quality improvements translated into improved supplier ratings from major U.S. soft drink customers.
Good Results at AFL do Brasil
Implemented throughout the AFL wire harness plant in Itajubá, Brazil, ABS produced improvements in areas ranging from safety to production costs.
 7.9 million hours worked without a lost workday accident, representing more than 1,600 workdays.
Absenteeism reduced 66%, to 2.16%, from 1998 through 2001.
Zero circuits or finished goods reworked in the plant since June 2001.
Zero obsolescence in raw material since November 1999 and zero obsolescence in finished goods inventory since June 2001.
Average delivery performance 99% on-time.
Break-even point reduced 44% since June 1998.
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Roberto De Aquino,
Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico
Shannon Saliard,
Davenport, Iowa, USA
May Rennick,
Huntly, Western Austrailia
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