Lean and six sigma manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is the business model of tactical methods whose focus on eliminating waste while delivering quality products on time at least cost with greater efficiency. It also offers significant environmental benefits. In the U.S some sectors such as aerospace, automotive, electronics, furniture production, and health care have already implemented lean manufacturing.

Lean manufacturing’s elements:

·         Elimination of Waste: Waste is defined as anything that consumes material or labor and that does not add value to the final end customer.

·         Equipment Reliability: Equipment that runs when production requires it to run

·         Continuous Flow: Material flows one part at a time compare to big batches.Reduces lead time; thus speeding up order to delivery time.

·         Stop the Line Quality System: The production line is stopped when bad quality is being produced.

·         Kanban System: Kanban is a pull material system. The material is pulled through the production process by customer demand. Kanban uses cards to move material along the value stream.

·         Standard Work: Standard Work is a system of organizing work steps and documenting them. The team leader prepares the Standard Work.

·         Visual Management: When a plant utilizes Visual Management fully, a new employee can understand how to do his job from the visual information in the plant.

·         In Station Process Control: Each workstation has the information and equipment for the worker to inspect and produce good quality parts.

·         Level Production: Production is leveled to customer demand.

·         Talk Time: Production is paced to customer demand. Talk Time = Time available to produce a product divided by the number of parts that the customer wants to buy.

Origin of Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing originated from Toyoda (now known as Toyota) production system which is often referred to as Just in Time Production. After World War II the Toyota Company became successful when Japanese factory owners adopted a number of American production and quality techniques. Henry Ford and the Statistical Quality Control ideas of Edwards Deming became the foundation of Toyota’s production process.

The concept of Lean manufacturing was developed by the Toyota executive, Taiichi Ohno. Mr. Ohno refined, honed, and improved in all areas henry ford and Dr. W. Edwards Deming created. He did so to cut cost of production and to eliminate types of waste

Mr. Ohno was a Japanese businessman. He is considered to be the father of the Toyota Production System, which became Lean Manufacturing in the U.S. He graduated of the Nagoya Technical High School (Japan).

 Lean manufacturing vs. traditional manufacturing

Traditional manufacturing has been driven by sales forecasts that companies need to produce and stockpile inventory to support. Lean manufacturing is based on the concept that production should be drive by the actual customer demands and requirements. Instead of pushing product to the marketplace, it is pulled through by the customers' actual needs. A lean enterprise can produce higher quality products, in lower quantities, with shorter lead times, with less committed inventory, at lower costs that traditional manufactures that mass produce.

The Ford company system of production was based on “continuous system for manufacturing.” In continuous manufacturing system the items are produced to be stock and not for specific orders. This system of manufacturing did not last long, because Ford sales started to decrease. This was due because less and less people were buying cars. Therefore Ford was losing money for each car produced.

Willow Run Bomber Plant

The Willow Run manufacturing plant was located San Diego California. It was constructed during World War II by Ford Motor Company for the mass production of the B-24 Liberator military aircraft. Albert Kahn, an industrial architect sketched the L building.  

 Frederick W. Taylor

Mr. Taylor studied the workplace, formulating landmark efficiency standards that are still relevant in business today. In his studied he concluded that motivated workers tend to work more efficiently and a way of accomplish that was to pay the workers enough for their output. It also concluded that time was an essential management tool.

Terms

Continues improvement is an ongoing effort to improve the quality of products, services or processes.

Best practices is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark.

Just-in-Time means making only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed.

Value added is the amount by which the value of an article is increased at each stage of its production, exclusive of initial costs.