Dozens of students sit hunched over long, plastic tables, meticulously folding and refolding pieces of paper as the teacher monitors their progress with a watchful eye. It’s difficult to see what they’re making under the flurry of smoothing and pinching: Is it origami? Or maybe it’s a gift-wrapping workshop at a local department store?
Nope. It’s something much more elementary—literally.
It’s paper airplanes.
But unlike troublesome kids in detention, the students in Allan Hancock College’s new “lean manufacturing” class are making airplanes for a purely academic purpose. Today, employees from C&D Zodiac—an aircraft parts producer based in Santa Maria—are using the craft to teach their fellow classmates about lean manufacturing, a business practice that focuses on eliminating waste and improving efficiency.
“[Lean manufacturing] can be something as simple as organizing the workspace to be more efficient or using specific [terminology] to improve communication,” class instructor Rob Mabry said. “A lot of it is just changing the way you think about something.”
Mabry came to Hancock in September 2009 to head the machine technology program.
“The program hadn’t been looked at in almost 20 years. But the technology in manufacturing has gone through enormous changes in that time. So I pretty much got to rebuild the program from the ground up,” he said.
While working on the program, Mabry started talking to local businesses, like C&D Zodiac, to see what kinds of qualities they look for in potential employees.
“What I found is that engineering graduates from Cal Poly [San Luis Obispo] were all well-versed in lean manufacturing concepts,” he said. “But the problem was that the people who don’t come out of Poly aren’t familiar with it. Also, their current staff members don’t have a place to learn about it because it’s really a different way of thinking.”
So Mabry partnered with several local businesses to create the lean manufacturing class, which Hancock students and manufacturing professionals could take to learn about eliminating waste and maximizing efficiency in the workplace. The class has been meeting at Hancock once a month since February, and includes professionals from all over the Central Coast.
[image-2] Mabry used the computer manufacturer Dell and car manufacture General Motors to illustrate the difference between a “lean” business and a “not-so-lean” business in today’s market.
“When you go online and buy a computer and give them your credit card, the computer doesn’t exist,” he said. “The investment is constantly being returned. It’s not being stacked up on office floors or in warehouses. Now compare that to a company like GM. I mean, how many cars do you think they have out sitting in dealer lots not going anywhere?”
But lean manufacturing is about more than just cutting costs, Mabry said.
“It’s about keeping the big picture in mind. Instead of thinking, ‘It costs us $22 a day to run on this machine,’ look at it as, ‘This machine processes $60,000 worth of product a day,’ he said.
Daniel Wilson, an employee of C&D Zodiac who is enrolled in the class, said his company views this kind of thinking as essential, especially in today’s economic climate.
“I’d say that companies that stay in business and stay competitive definitely have a lot of these principles in their infrastructure,” he said. “But what’s great is that it can apply to almost anything, even your personal life.”
Back in the classroom, the engineers/students have gone from feverishly folding their own airplanes to participating in a well-oiled paper airplane-folding machine. The class members sit together in teams, and each person is responsible for a specific duty.
“How’s it going over there, customer?” one team member asks an activity supervisor posing as a client.
“I have three defective airplanes,” she says.
“Oh, no! We can’t have that,” the man exclaims.
“No. We take the defects and make them better,” his teammate replies.
And as the stopwatch ticks down to zero, the team comes together to fix its mistakes. m
Contact News Editor Amy Asman at aasman
@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 1-8, 2010.