Lean Production Delivery System Essay

Lean Manufacturing logic, tools and techniques were developed by many industrial innovators in the 19th and 20th centuries but it was mostly popularized by Toyota 's successes with Lean after World War II. Lean is all about economy of motion and the reduction of waste in any business. Most of the Lean concepts are part of Industrial Engineering curriculum offered by many colleges and universities.

Lean manufacturing, lean enterprise, or lean production, often simply, "Lean," is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes

Abstract The ‘‘lean’’ approach has been applied more frequently in discrete manufacturing than in the continuous/process sector, mainly because of several perceived barriers in the latter environment that have caused

Literature review The implementation of lean manufacturing like any other productivity improvement initiative is believed to harbour enormous difficulties (Denton and Hodgson,

Lean production is a philosophy of manufacturing without waste (Braun, Tietz, & Harrison, 2010) . It is “pull” system. The goal of a lean production system is to eliminate the waste of time and money that accompanies large inventories. Lean companies believe in “Just-in-time” (JIT) philosophy. JIT inventory focuses on purchasing raw materials just in time for production and then completes finished goods just in time for delivery to customers. Companies are able to eliminate the waste of storing and un-storing raw material and finished goods. Lean

Lean Manufacturing Systems were first introduced in Japan by the Toyota Motor Corporation. The Lean movement is a type of a system that relies on simple visual cues in order to manage production stages that are based on customer demand. The system is a is also a kind of manufacturing that put great emphasis on the minimization of resources, time included, that is utilized in various activities of manufacturing and provides techniques for uninterrupted quality improvement. Although this system has gained enormous momentum and respect over the last decades, some companies have found it difficult to use Lean Manufacturing Systems, and, as a result, the companies have ended up failing. The concept of Lean Systems is best understood when companies familiarize themselves with certain key insights that are utilized during the course of systems architecting. The article provides a synopsis of the lean and is divided into four parts that will be mainly used for the purpose of this review.

Lean is a quality management program that was made popular at the Toyota Corporation. Its main philosophy involves eliminating wasteful or unnecessary steps in the process and creating value for customers. Toyota’s past president identified seven types of waste to be eliminated from the supply chain. They are waste from overproduction, wasting time, transportation waste, inventory waste, processing waste, waste of motion and waste from defects. Organizations that successfully implement Lean methodologies can reap dramatic benefits (Jacobs & Chase,

Lean manufacturing is an exercise that is based on waste minimization. It considers the utilization of resources for any activity other than the creating value for the customer, as waste. Basically, lean is centered on “Delivering value with less work by eliminating waste” (Liker, 1997). Lean manufacturing philosophy involves never ending efforts to reduce or eliminate 'muda' (Waste) in manufacturing processes.

The first initiative that was taken by understanding and elaborating the concept of lean manufacturing was done by Henry Ford. He was the first to think about the use of automation in relation to mass production processes. The identification of the development of such technique forms the crux of the development of lean manufacturing. The thinking and idea given by Ford were revised and polished by Toyota Production System to maximize returns from its production process (Gitman & McDaniel, 2008). The major focus of the functioning of the lean production process relies on finding that method for manufacturing, which is efficient in nature and helps in removal of wasteful steps that do not have any contribution in the end product of the company. The concept of lean manufacturing does not mean to lower the quality of products rather the focus of the company is on finding something better for accomplishing the daily tasks of the organization, which increases its efficiency. The main focus in the process of lean manufacturing is on prioritizing the simple and routine tasks aiming at continuous improvement. The comprehensive outputs of

In short, lean production is essentially about receiving more from less. The point of this idea is to lessen the amount of assets or quantity, so the main focus can be utilized as a benefit for selling products and furthering assistance to customers. All while in sync, it is about making the association of the business or supply chain more productive, vaulable and more importantly effective. Lean production can be characterized from various perspectives, however the most mainstream is the “elimination of all waste and continuous improvement of productivity.” (Arnold, Chapman, 2012, p.340) Waste means something besides the base measure of hardware, parts, space, material, creation time and laborers ' time which make it completely important to increase the value of the item. Lean production is built on various effective ideas such as continuous improvement, organizing the business, and just-in-time production, which makes lean production so effective in supply chains. Lean production includes wiping out what might be wasteful and hence utilizing less energy, supplys, capacity and time. In return, this lessens costs and helps companies, such as supply chains, excel in business.

Lean manufacturing is a method of reducing waste (muda) in the manufacturing system. It also considers the waste due to overload and waste dude to over burden. Lean manufacturing also best known as Toyota production system or kaizen production system. Although the Toyota production system was introduced more than a century ago it has continue to develop over time. It was practiced by the Henry Ford for the manufacturing of Ford model T which was very successful between the years 1908 to 1920 which almost sold 2 Million cars a year. Later on it was developed by the Toyota in Japan. The main idea behind the lean manufacturing is to value the customer needs by reducing the waste and achieving good products with more value by consuming less resources. Muda is defined as the material or the activity for which the customer is not willing to pay. The main task of lean manufacturing is to identify Muda and to get rid of it. These products are created by using less human effort, less space, less capital, less time to produce high quality.

The main aim of lean manufacturing is to limit inventory, excess workers and waste. The basic principles can be broken down into five practises – value, value stream, flow, pull and perfection [1]. It is essential to map the value that the product provides to the customer. Decisions need to be well thought-out, and implementations should be rapid. It is also important to ensure that each step provides value thus maintaining the value stream. Flow recognises the processes that ensure that the movement between the value creating steps is smooth. Lean manufacturing requires the customer to pull the output from the previous step and hence avoid overproduction. Finally, the vendor needs to continually strive to improve their quality and processes. Lean manufacturing emphasises on continuous improvement in quality and work should be stopped as soon as quality starts suffering.

When it comes to Lean Enterprise, it focuses mainly on reducing cycle time and also waste in the process. Lean Enterprise was at first developed by Toyota Motor Corporation as the Toyota Production System which became popular after 1973. The energy crisis facilitated the increasing demand at that time. “The term ‘Lean Enterprise’ is used to broaden the scope of a Lean programme from manufacturing to embrace the enterprise or entire organization”. (Alukal, 2003)

The modern concept of lean management as used today can be traced back to the Toyota Production System (TPS). The manufacturing philosophy was pioneered by Japanese engineers to emphasize the minimization of waste and focus on “doing it right the first time” (Davis and Heineke, 2005). Engineers knew that waste was something that customers were not willing to pay for thus they should try and eliminate it. This led to the discovery that inventory is essentially waste. Keeping parts and products in stock adds no value to a company, and should be eliminated. Although lean production began in Japan, it now has been successfully implemented across the globe (Agus and Hajinoor, 2012).

Lean manufacturing is to control the resources in accordance with the customers' needs and about reducing unnecessary waste (Womack et aL, 1990).