Section 3 - Management & Accountability (continued)
Operations
Circulating Coin Production
The circulating coin production area was closed for a period of six months from July 2007 to enable refurbishment of the area to be completed. A buffer stock of circulating coins was produced prior to the shutdown to meet demand.
The shutdown period provided a number of challenges. All manufacturing equipment needed to be removed for refurbishment to occur. Staff were temporarily moved to other production roles within the Mint or were involved in the refurbishment of the 13 circulating coining presses. The fitting of new and reconditioned tooling and components to the presses will extend their life by many years.
The refurbishment has acted as a catalyst to assist in our move to become a modern coining facility which in turn allows the Mint to move towards a lean manufacturing environment. This includes the introduction of a Visual Workplace including expansion of the Mint-wide 5S initiative. The Visual Workplace is being created with an emphasis on an uncluttered, organised work area, large noticeboards, visual devices and visual controls. This results in an improved understanding of work instructions, less work in progress and an increased level of accurate information on the manufacturing process available to all staff.
Since the hand back of the Circulating Coin area in January 2008, over 190 million coins across all denominations have been produced. It is planned that a further 250 million coins will be produced during the first 5 months of the 2008–09 financial year, in preparation for the next scheduled shutdown to facilitate the delivery of the materials handling and warehousing system.
There will be a continued focus on moving to a lean manufacturing environment with the introduction of Task or Action Teams. These teams will empower staff to make considerable contributions to the Mint’s business outcomes with a focus on specific production or workplace issues. Further enhancements to the Visual Workspace including progressing 5S will be implemented.
Numismatic Coin Production
Numismatic coin production has focused on the preparation for a planned six month shutdown for refurbishment and to ensure that the Mint’s numismatic coin release program would be unaffected. This involved making sufficient coins to meet all planned demand from August 2008 to February 2009.
A number of organisational changes were completed in 2007–08 to integrate the blank preparation and die polishing units into the Numismatic Section. These changes have delivered better overall coordination of the production process with improved communications between the units. This led to a better quality of blanks delivered to coining and a more timely supply of dies.
For the first time a modern laser frosting machine was used to apply frosting to the dies used to produce high volume products. This dramatically reduced the preparation time for each die.
The Numismatic production facility will be closed for building refurbishment from July to December 2008. Several major pieces of new equipment will be installed with the completion of the refurbishment. These include a new Automatic Pickling Line to improve blank preparation efficiency and product quality and a physical vapour deposition (PVD) coating machine for die preparation. The PVD coating machine will reduce the demand for the chrome plating of dies and deliver an increased die life.
Numismatic coining presses will be extensively reconditioned during the refurbishment shutdown drawing on the detailed recommendations of machine specialists. This will extend the life of the presses and make them more able to deliver a high quality product.