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Lean Manufacturing Is A Method Of Carefully Reducing Non Value

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Lean manufacturing is a method of carefully reducing non-value-adding work during production. Value is defined from customer’s perspective as any action or process that the customer will be willing to pay for. Lean manufacturing has been traced to automobile industry – Ford motors in the United States and Toyota motors in Japan(Singh et al., 2010a; Singh et al., 2010b). These companies simplified the processes of making their products by eliminating non-adding-value works. This also led to standardization.
Today, lean manufacturing is not only limited to manufacturing but has been applied across nearly all business activities such as marketing and services. Technip produces products for their use and on demand, as well as renders services …show more content…

2.2 Lean Manufacturing in Technip
Lean manufacturing, in conjunction with six sigma, has been implemented after obtaining the international organization for standardization (ISO) certification on quality – ISO 9001 – in 2004 ( 'Umbilical systems; customised umbilical systems for the global offshore oil and gas market, ' 2011). The lean manufacturing processes was necessitated through a need to reduce cost and optimize schedule. Although the implementation of lean manufacturing has brought about positive change through waste reduction, the potential benefits of the manufacturing technique have not been fully harnessed. The following are examples of how Technip has implemented its lean manufacturing technique:
• Appropriate production and inventory control: Technip umbilical systems (TUS) have an efficient inventory control system that minimizes inventory costs during project execution, especially at the procurement phase. TUS does not suffer from overproduction waste as products are only produced when needed due to high customization and uniqueness of every oil or gas field to be developed.
• Correct metrics: Although TUS has branches in five continents that use different metric systems, it has been integrated as part of the company’s culture to inquire the metric systems being used by all companies participating in a project. This process eliminates the waste associated with working to a different metrics from other project companies or

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