Wausau Equipment Company Case Study Essay

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

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 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].

The company should also focus on lean manufacturing because it has certain positive points like increase of efficiency, decrease in the waste, improvement of control and also this will create the unique demand and need of the customer in terms of products. It will also offer cost savings strategy and will maximize the high amount of values ​​with high

Chase et al. (2006) state that “lean production is an integrated set of activities designed to achieve high-volume production using minimal inventories of raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods” (p. 471). The essential components of lean production are surplus elimination, constant work-flow, and consumer appeal. The minute these components are in the neighborhood of supply, quality and cost, this outlines the groundwork for a lean production organization. A Japanese plan of continuous progress named the Kaizen is responsible for the lean production idea. Riordan can adjust the lean production concept by employee empowerment and advancement, staying focused on making processes stronger, impact of consumer relations, rapid merchandise growth and production, and cooperation with suppliers are the imperative strategies of Riordan managing lean. Features of a lean enterprise include a combined single piece continuous workflow and near incorporation of the entire value series from raw material to finished product. In addition, demand drives production rather than predictions. This means that manufacture designing is by consumer demand or appeal and not to become system loading or strict work flows on the company floor. This will help Riordan keep minimal inventories at each step of the production process. It is also important to know that having a working participation by employees involved in

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

Since the lean operation and the total quality management model are based on a highly technical approach, toolsets and qualitative analysis, hence sufficient training in leadership, functional and technical skill will be mandatory for the employees in every category, including the operation, functional and business area to ensure a successful operation and to communicate and maintain proper control in the process. The Company will follow the agile manufacturing practice which comprises a set of quality standards, practices and iterative testing process driven by the end user feedback method to deliver a high quality customizable product that fits the exact need for a specific market segment and keep constant focus to reduce production overheads and eliminate any unnecessary steps in the process engineering that could potentially increase the cost and the delivery timing (Schnaars,

However, there is lack of understanding of how to implement a manufacturing improvement concept to a service oriented industry. Although there is strong evidence that, when properly applied, Lean can provided marked improvement in a healthcare setting. These improvements are tied to a strong commitment from the leadership to provide clear and concise guidance, goals, benchmarks, and to motivate the staff beyond the “bandwagon effect” by providing positive feedback and timely assessments of the effect of the new processes and protocols.

“Lean means creating more value for customers with less” (Krejewski, L., Ritzman, L.P., & Malhotra, M.K., 2013). Implementing this into a project can make the project very successful at a lower rate of cost and time. There are five steps in allowing the lean process to work successfully. This process is easy to remember but not always easy to achieve. Specifying the value from the customer’s point of view of the product that the customer is interested in purchasing is the first step. Identifying all the steps of value for the product the customer wants to purchase and eliminating the steps that are unnecessary is the second step. Creating a sequence of steps that flow in a consistent fashion and will flow smoothly toward the customer is the third step. Introducing the flow of the product that the customer is interested in purchasing and allowing the customer to pull value from the product is the fourth step. The fifth and final step in the lean technique process is “as value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced, begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect value is created with no waste” (Lean Enterprises Institute, 2015).

Lean Methodology in Health Care article is a ………article. The intent of this paper is to bring to light the methodologies used in the manufacturing industry. This systematic way of thinking can be used in health care to focus on the patient and add value to their health care experience. Plainly put, this method is to provide the best value from the patient’s perspective, while using the talents of the people in the establishment and using the least amount of resources. The article discussed the eight wastes found in any business. Those wastes are unused human potential, wait times, inventory issues, transportation problems, defects or anything not correct the first time, overproduction and excess processing. The article goes on to inform

The lean principles motivates to achieve different benefits such as identifying values, map the value stream, create flow, establish pull and seek perfection. These principles can be applied in this case study as follows.

The exits manufacturing system had many error, waste and inefficiencies in shop floor and logistic (they wasted long time and valuable raw materials and sometimes the manufactured panels wasted because of weak layout design) , on the other hand on 2006 customer demands increased around 75 percent and managers need to enhance their manufacturing process efficiency to reduce their costs and respond sooner to the customer demand .in October 2006 Siemens AG sent a letter regarding the implementation of lean management in Kalwa company and mentioned they eagerness to improve Kalwa factory like the other branches during the world . They expected this implementation will enhance company’s capacity to triple during five or six years.

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.

Related to the large workload, there were also not enough proper quality check points to check the quality of the work in progress. Quality is mainly controlled during assembly, and not checked while being packaged. If a product was not controlled during assembly and was damaged during shipping, the correct department is not able to be addressed to correct the issue resulting in bad quality control. If all the above task inefficiency is taking place the processes cannot deliver a quality product and on time. For the lean system to be implemented all the concerns need to be addressed, and employees are one of the keys to this change. Currently employees are worried to lose their jobs and are over worked, with this state, employees might not be acceptable to the changes. Machines and systems need to be updated to save money, time, and to reduce raw material waste. Quality can be achieved when employees and management are dedicated to make this their priority, it is not only on the quality team but the whole companies.

The main purpose of this research is to define better handling of ongoing project by complying with the principles of lean management to obtain maximum efficiency in production processing. During the project production lifecycle, many projects go through various challenges and to ensure that projects are handled in better ways, organisation perform different actions and approaches to retain project within budget and specified requirements. Today organizations face challenges in the form of intense international competition, rapid technology evolution, maturing customer expectations and quality demands. Therefore, to meet the customers expectation and finish project more efficiently, lean management approach can be more helpful in identifying bottlenecks and project causes at earlier stages of project development. This proposal will highlight issues and key solutions to the problems faced by projects these days by applying lean principles.