Standardized Work for Noncyclical Processes

Joseph Niederstadt was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in the early 1950s. This was a town that depended heavily on the automotive industry, as did many midwest towns during this time period. Industry was booming and mass production was well on the way. The automotive industry employed tens of thousands in the area, providing a standard of living for those working in the factories that few had ever seen or probably will ever see again. Like many others in the area, Niederstadt started work in a General Motors factory with the goal of making money and providing benefits for a family that was yet to come. He never realized that it was the beginning of a career in manufacturing that would span beyond 30 years. His first experience was working in one of GM's foundries located in the area. His many jobs included: * Trim deck operator (loading the furnace charging buckets with 7.5 tons of mixed parts to be melted) * Overhead crane operator (consisted of driving a crane with a bucket of several tons of molten iron) on an overhead rail and delivering small amounts of molten iron to other locations * Furnace tear out crew, where the job was to rebuild the lining of an electric induction furnace 20 feet from the surface using a 90-pound jackhammer in 100+ degree heat (many times the wood forms he was standing on would start on fire due to the heat) Later at the Chevrolet Motor Division, Niederstadt was an assembly line operator, a material handler for the assembly line, repair man for assemblies, and a part-time fill-in for the assembly job setter. After several years in these positions, he applied for and was accepted for a supervisor's role. Whether it was at GM or Delphi Automotive Systems, his supervisory experiences included broaching, machining, assembly, after-market operations, quality control, maintenance, receiving, shipping, production control and logistics (including coordination of the entire facilities annual inventory activities), stampings, blanking, rubber extrusion, and plastic injection molding. Later, as advancements came his way, he also gained experience in labor relations, implementing, coaching and mentoring others through the Divisional Lean Core Team, supplier development, and international assignments. He also won one of the very first mentoring awards given by the Delphi Corporation (Troy, Michigan). During this progression, Niederstadt has never forgotten his roots as an operator and has always strived to make the work environment better for the operator. He has lived through the transition from mass to lean production, from the "do as I tell you" mentality to a team-managed work system, from massive inventories to "Just In Time" philosophies, from "run all you can every time you can" thinking to PULL systems, from dedicated equipment to flexible cells, from changeovers that took days to ones that now take only minutes ... the list goes on and on. He has been taught by several senseis from Toyota as well as some of the best Lean people at GM and Delphi. Niederstadt has worked in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, India, Korea, China, and Thailand, applying the system approach that is included in this book. Most recently, he was the director of Lean Applications Asia-Pacific Region for a global corporation and responsible for leading the implementation of Lean in 26 facilities in 11 different countries. He is currently an independent consultant applying Lean tools to manufacturing and SGA (salary general and administrative) operations.