The trend toward lean manufacturing and work cells has, in some instances, been hard on the conveyor industry. An emphasis on flexibility and the ruthless elimination of waste doesn’t always leave room for powered material transport.
For example, traditional fixed conveyors can represent a substantial capital investment and require periodic maintenance-a source of waste according to the lean manufacturing philosophy. They also take up valuable production space and can be difficult or even impossible to reconfigure in response to product or volume changes.
Then there is the danger of that most insidious of wastes, overproduction. Saddled with an expensive conveyor-based system, production managers may be tempted to run a line at a higher than optimal rate to reduce unit costs and create the illusion of efficiency.
Nonetheless, conveyor manufacturers have not been sitting still. Over the years, their products have continued to evolve, so that today’s conveyors offer a host of technologies allowing them to play a roll in a variety of production environments.
One of the common rebuttals conveyor supplier get is "we already work with lean cells, and we don’t want to use conveyors.” However, suppliers emphasize that it’s important to make sure that investment decisions are based on a close evaluation of a particular manufacturing process. Just because you’re doing lean doesn’t mean you have to go with a manual build-and-pass process.
Along these same lines, workstation manufacturer Lista International Corp. (Holliston, MA) recently began offering its Arlink 8000 series with an optional supplied conveyor system feature. Fully modular and marketed specifically with lean manufacturing needs in mind, Lista engineers have configured the workstations so they can be used with a wide range of conveyor types. Clearly, in their opinion, powered conveyors still have a role to play in the world of lean manufacturing.