Lean: a Key Success Factor in Automobile Industry

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 simultaneously decreasing

“Lean is a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste (non-value-added activities) through continuous improvement by flowing the **product at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection.” Lockwood [24].

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

Lean production is an incorporated group of activities set up to attain high volume production by using low inventories of raw materials, processing goods, and finished goods (Chase, Jacobs, & Aquilano, 2006). Using a lean production process, the China plant will be able to produce goods at a lower cost. Riordan China plant will need to eliminate any waste in the production process to achieve the highest level of efficiency.

I used Lean thinking to analyze process waste and touch time to resolve the effects on supply chain (How To Compare:624)

The purpose of the lean production model is to eliminate the waste created during the manufacturing process and to increase the quality of the products (Continental Design and Engineering, 2008). This is done by streamlining the process and eventually reduces costs and production times. There are seven different types of waste identified by lean production: over production, inventory, conveyance, correction, motion, processing and waiting (Continental Design and Engineering, 2008).

Lean is defines the manufacturing philosophy that reduces the time between the shipping and customer demand, which based on the systematic method by eliminating waste, that means giving the customer what they want when they want it, and don 't waste whatever. Rahmana, Sharif and Esa (2013) suggested lean production is mentioned to improve the company 's performance from the philosophy in reducing waste in order. That means, lean system destination is the decrease cost by removing the non-value activities, which they are applying a category of tools and techniques for checking and eliminating defective in the production process. In the Evenort Company should emulate the five overriding principles of lean thinking in terms of implementing lean that there is guarantee the company has been driving correctly in the lean manufacturing (Cardiff 2015) as can show in table 1.

Your organization, a company that manufactures automobile brake pads, is about to introduce lean concepts into its operations in order to be more competitive with foreign manufacturers. The lean project manager does not understand why you, the safety manager, want to be a part of the process. Provide a convincing argument about what you can contribute if you are included.

The greatest challenges to any manufacturer in implementing a lean manufacturing strategy is attacking those processes that cause one of the seven types of waste first, and second, creating a more synchronized manufacturing strategy. The major characteristics of this strategy are

Lean production is widely understood to be production based upon a range of waste saving measures inspired by Japanese manufacturing companies, particularly the Kaizen and Just in time techniques. Metov’s plastics have taken the decision upon themselves to incorporate some of the characteristics of lean production namely time management and critical path analysis into their manufacturing process and I will examine these.

This will in turn help the company honor its promises to customers which will create customer goodwill. Again a lean production ensures the company reduces wastage to the bare minimum. (Wolfe, 2011) This is very helpful in pursuing lower costs. Key areas addressed by the strategy include stock holding levels, lead time minimization and reduction of stock holding costs for the company. Lower costs will enhance our ability to offer better prices than competition giving us a cost leadership competitive edge. Efficiency and effectiveness of sourcing and the elimination of waste in our goods inwards processes is also key in breaking the quality cost trade off which is central to securing a blue ocean space in the industry.

According to (Homa Sheikh-Sajadieh, 2013) “Waste elimination is one of the most effective ways to increase the profitability of any business. Processes either add value or waste to the production of a good or service. The seven wastes originated in Japan, where waste is known as “muda”. “The seven wastes” is a tool to further categorize “muda” and was originally developed by Toyota’s Chief Engineer Taiichi Ohno as the core of the Toyota Production System, also known as Lean Manufacturing. To eliminate waste, it is important to understand exactly what waste is and where it exists. While products significantly differ between factories, the typical wastes found in manufacturing environments are quite similar. For each waste, there is a strategy to reduce or eliminate its effect on a company, thereby improving overall performance and quality”.

As usual, every theory implemented has its own limitation. For lean thinking, it can help manufacturing industry to achieve in minimizing the waste activity. However, lean manufacturing has not been accepted by all users. For instance, difficulty in having human coordination and the limitation in applicability outside monotonous manufacturing environments are the weaknesses that

Production managers are faced with many challenges within their facilities such as managing inventories, controlling waste, and managing an ever changing production schedule. Managing product flows can be difficult when balancing supply chain inventories with demand changes or scheduling problems due to throughput variations. Several methods for managing these challenges have been developed through the years and each have their own advantages and disadvantages for different applications. The methods discussed in this paper will be limited to the Theory of Constraints, Just in Time, and Material Requirements Planning. All three methods are designed to manage different aspects of a manufacturing facility’s product flow but all three were ultimately developed as an optimization strategy for the manufacturing process. The roots of Lean Manufacturing is one of the earliest management strategies to be developed to address the challenges for production control and may well have been the birth of strategic production control as we know it today.

Answer: The use of Lean manufacturing defines numerous types of waste that make a production system inefficient and costly. These are: