Olympic Steel – Bettendorf, IA: Francisco Marcelano

The employees at Olympic Steel’s Bettendorf, IA division need to manually adjust staged material on the laser bed prior to running, because they’re unable to set the bundles evenly on the staging pad. Francisco Marcelano, Laser Team Lead, used scrap material to create a backstop on the laser staging pad to align the bundles prior …

The employees at Olympic Steel’s Bettendorf, IA division need to manually adjust staged material on the laser bed prior to running, because they’re unable to set the bundles evenly on the staging pad. Francisco Marcelano, Laser Team Lead, used scrap material to create a backstop on the laser staging pad to align the bundles prior to the lift master picking up the sheet. He tested a prototype to work out the kinks. Then, when he was satisfied with the design, he welded the steel permanently to the laser pad staging area. This creative idea saves five minutes of setup time per sheet when running this job. This one poka yoke saves almost four hours in processing and over $1,000 each time this job is run.

Lesson Learned:

Just because a job gets done, doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do the job. Taking a few minutes to analyze each step to identify where improvements can be made can make a big difference in the bottom line.