BOEING LEAN: Boeing made use of lean techniques in their production system and increased its production by 50% and also reduced its floor space by 40%. Assembling a Boeing 737 is a typical job. Workers should take 367,000 parts, an same number of bolts, rivets, other equipment and 36 miles (58 kilometres) of electrical wire and then keep them all combined to make an airplane [2]. Engineers to machinists were involved in lean (reducing waste) in the factory. By creating an assembly line, aircraft will pass through the workers were they going to concentrate on assembling. Allocating all employees in the factory building and organising special teams helped a lot to solve the errors in the assembly line [2]. In the assembly line, there are eight beacon lights which reflect the production status. If everything is good it shows green colour. If an error occurs, the worker will press a button and the green light will changes to yellow and the panel board will shows the category of the problem(which category it is related to). The worker will pass on to a computer and writes about the problem in a brief manner and the problem should be assigned to special team to solve it within 30 minutes if not, the light turns to purple and the assembly line will shuts down. This moving assembly is the icon of factory’s lean strategies. In case of tools handling, the tools will be send to the respective assembly stations in the form of kits and the tool which requires for a particular job will
Production practices have had an important role in satisfying the dynamic market. Many approaches have being developed in order to respond effectively to specific business requirements. In fact, some areas of management have focused its study on the overseeing, designing, and controlling the process of production in an effort to find the best methodology that ensures the business success and performance. However, complexities arise in this field because many variables such as costs, inventory, scheduling, suppliers, etc have to be considered in any business. Lean approach and the traditional approach are two points of view that aim to address this complexities, and those will be examined in this essay.
“Lean manufacturing systems produce what customers want, in the quantity they want, when they want it, and with minimum resources. Applying lean concepts in manufacturing typically presents the greatest opportunities for cost reduction and quality improvement” (Jacobs & Chase, 2011, p. 423), Riordan Manufacturing can better position themselves as market leaders.
Lean manufacturing is the production of goods using less of everything than in mass production: less human effort, less manufacturing space, less investment tools and less engineering time to develop a new product. A company becomes lean by continuously increasing its capacity to produce high-quality goods while
In a finished product, out of most of the industries only one particular company, provide a very little amount of the total value. Hence to improve the process within the company lean techniques are used so that the total impact will not be high when it is applied to a broader supply chain.
One obstacle is the perception that the use of lean manufacturing solutions is, at best, nothing more than a trend. In addition, at worst, a brief craze. It is often observed as nothing more than a repackaging of fundamental industrial engineering principles dressed up in new clothes, and flaunted in new terms to appeal to a new industry. Lean manufacturing is sometimes seen in many industries as a collection of techniques, known to be effective in the auto industry, which some people are now trying to impose on a completely different industry. This means that perceptions have to be changed.
(Dennis,2007). Over next 30 years, Taiichi Ohno solved numerous problems related to lean production in order to push his system through Toyota. Nowadays, the Toyota Production System (TPS) is used in accordance with “lean manufacturing” across the world (Tapping,2007). But today we face the same intimidating
In our economy today we face major issues dealing with manufacturing with how do we build or retain the capacity and competitive edge in the global market? Well manufactured is measured in a number of ways, such as statistics and analyses. These metrics range from the amount and type of goods produced, to a detailed breakdown of the people who contribute to this production, to the economic impact of both. But knowing the market is tough using lean manufacturing techniques as a tool any company can maintain control of an operation of any business.
The automotive industry continues to grow every day. Companies are always coming out with new technology for cars to better their product. In order for these companies to keep a competitive advantage they most implement different types of manufacturing processes. One of these manufacturing processes is lean manufacturing. Sundar, Balaji and Satheesh have done research on lean manufacturing, and they define it as the elimination of waste by determining value added activities and non-value added activities. Non-value added activities consist of transportation, inventory, motion waiting, overproduction, over processing, and defects (2014). Elmoselhy has found multiple tools to be used to implement lean manufacturing. Some of these tools are: 5S, Value Stream Mapping, Single Minute Exchange Die, Kaizen, and Autonomation. This list does not include all of the possible ways to implement lean manufacturing, but gives a brief introduction to a couple. The 5S stands for Sorting, Setting, Shining, Standardizing, and Sustaining (2013). This paper will discuss one of the five S’s, which will be standardizing. Also, this paper will also go into detail about how an automotive manufacturing company uses Single Minute Exchange Die, and some other aspects of lean manufacturing such as visual control and environmental management. Because lean manufacturing can be implemented in many different ways this paper
Even with the massive amount of research that has taken place into the Toyota Production System, fifty one years after it was born, Slack et al still refer to Lean Manufacturing as a ‘radical departure from traditional operations practice’.
Eliminating the inefficiencies created by the lack of defined procedures for returning excess inventory from the assembly lines to the raw materials warehouse is the objective of Electrolux. Establishing a written procedure and implementing it through consistent employee training will eliminate waste and reduce costs, while improving operations at the Memphis factory. For manned manufacturing systems, work process design pertains to designing efficient manufacturing processes (Ham & Park, 2014). Efficient workflow is important to the performance of a system, as the absence can create bottlenecks and performance to decline. Potential exists for bottlenecks and performance decline on the Electrolux assembly lines as excess material clutters the area, making it difficult for employees to perform the tasks assigned, within the designated time allotted. An analysis of workstation functions can assist in determining when excess materials should be relieved from the assembly line and who should perform this function. The assembly line workstation should include a materials disposition process at the end of each day, or during the change-over time to the next model variant.
The concept of "lean production" was first introduced in The Machine that Changed the World (Womack et al., 1991) to refer to a new way of looking at the manufacturing enterprise. It was distinguished from mass production by its single-minded focus on eliminating waste in all aspects of the enterprise.
In this part, the authors write about the steps of developing lean production by pointing out the assembly plants, the differences between “lean” and Ford’s point of view, production procedures, the supply chain, the scheme of selling automobiles, and what “lean” needs to be perfect.
At the current situation, Lean Manufacturing has turned into an overall marvel. It is entirely effective in drawing the consideration of organizations of all sizes. An extensive number of organizations are taking after Lean advancements and encountering unlimited upgrades in quality, production, customer service etc. According to lean principles, any use of resources that does not deliver consumer value is a target for change or elimination. It also refers to the elimination of non-value adding/wastes. This Lean approach has mainly been applied in manufacturing, notably in Toyota, and the Toyota Production System, from where Lean originates in the early 1960’s but not to a complete extent. However, lean has also been widely applied in non-manufacturing areas. ‘Lean Management’, or rather ‘Lean production’ is considered to be a smart approach on a system of measures and methodologies. Considering the aspects on a whole, the potential to bring the concept of Lean in various fields of activity like product development, supply chain,
Lean originally comes from the thought of scarce resources. The Japanese automotive manufacturer called Toyota was the one who introduced this method with innovations such as JIT, and so forth [14; 44; 28]. Lean operations were used as a different method for capital-intensive mass manufacture in order to help firm use resources more effectively and efficiently. As a result, the firm will be able to reduce muda activity and non-value adding tasks. The procedure of lean implementation and research had been widely used by many organizations across the world. Conglomerates found out that the manufacturing process need not only improvement in performance, but also the development must be extended and
In today’s world the phrase “time is money “is becoming more of a reality as manufacturers are looking to increase the quantity of products in lesser and lesser time. Over the years, people have tried to rise to the solution to minimize the time for producing goods, but none of them actually succeed. However, a wise man named Henry Ford re-introduced a brilliant idea of Assembly Line, which changed the very core of how manufacturers produce goods. An Assembly Line is a form of production where product parts are added to the line in a specific order to produce a finished product at the end of the line. The principle of The Assembly line is to increase the productivity at a lower cost. The demand of goods in our developing world has been staggering. We need more goods than we ever need as the population is sky high. Fortunately, we have a solution to