Lean Manufacturing mechanical report

Abstract

In this world of competition without proper production management a company cannot survive. Using a manufacturing concept for competitive advantage is relatively a new concept.

Lean manufacturing is a concept actually brought up y Toyota motor company, Japan. But it was popularized to the world by the book “THE MACHINE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD” by Womack, Jones and Roos of MIT in 1990.

Adding value by eliminating waste, being responsive to changes, focusing on quality and enhancing effectiveness of workforce is what achieved by lean manufacturing. It needs a systematic and continuing search for non value added activities. This seminar provides an overview of basic elements, techniques and benefits of lean manufacturing.

Elements Of Lean Manufacturing

Those concepts that lead to the implementation of lean manufacturing successfully are called elements of lean manufacturing. The basic elements of lean manufacturing are waste elimination, continuous improvement, pull system, one-piece workflow, cellular manufacturing and 5S’s. When these elements are focused in the areas of cost, quality and delivery, this forms the basis for a lean production system.

Elimination Of Waste

Waste is anything that doesn’t add value to the product. Seeing whether the process is adding value to the product or not is the best way to identify wastes.

                              Is the activity adding value?

               If YES                                                         If NO

   Is this the best way to do it?                         Can it be eliminated?

                                                                     If not, can it be reduced?

Out of the complete processes in an industry only about 5 % actually add value to the product. Rest of the process does not add any value. Rest 35% activities are such that even though this doesn’t add any value but still it cannot be eliminated as it is necessary. For eg.  Inventory cannot be completely reduced, scrap materials cannot be made zero, it may take few minutes to load unload and load for next operation etc. So focus should be on complete elimination of waste activities and reducing the necessary non-value adding activities

One-Piece Flow

One piece flow is one of the important techniques in implementing lean manufacturing. Traditional batch production in mass production is replaced by one piece flow in lean manufacturing. Here batch size is reduced to almost one. This reduces the total lead time and also reduces waiting between operations or queuing.

Comparison Between Traditional And Lean Manufacturing

For years manufacturers have created products in anticipation of having a market for them. Operations have traditionally been driven by sales forecasts and firms tended to stockpile inventories in case they were needed. A key difference in Lean Manufacturing is that it is based on the concept that production can and should be driven by real customer demand. Instead of producing what you hope to sell, Lean Manufacturing can produce what your customer wants with shorter lead times. Instead of pushing product to market, it's pulled there through a system that's set up to quickly respond to customer demand. 

Lean organizations are capable of producing high-quality products economically in lower volumes and bringing them to market faster than mass producers. A lean organization can make twice as much product with twice the quality and half the time and space, at half the cost, with a fraction of the normal work-in-process inventory. Lean management is about operating the most efficient and effective organization possible, with the least cost and zero waste.

Advantage

1.     High quality & reliability
2.    Lower overall costs
3.    Self-directed work teams
4.     Lead time reduction
5.      Fast market response
6.      Longer machine life

Conclusion

“LEAN” can be said as adding value by eliminating waste being responsive to change, focusing on quality and enhancing the effectiveness of the work force.

Although lean has its origin in the automobile industry it is being successfully used in other production industries. Lean manufacturing is now extended to fields like I.T, service etc in order to reduce production cost and meet changing customer needs.

Since lean is completely customer oriented it is here to stay. It is also important as it emphasis customer satisfaction.