Lean Concepts
Lean Concepts
Lean Concepts
Lean Manufacturing Terms and Concepts
leanmanufacture.net is a web resource and blog style website where you can find out more about lean manufacturing, operations management and business strategy from concepts and theory to real life applications which will help you achieve your operations goals and objectives. The site is intended to be user friendly and a vast knowledge resource that explains and addresses fundamental issues to the success of any business to anyone from students to entrepreneurs, manufacturing engineers, managers consultants and anyone interested in this broad subject. I hope you enjoy the site.
A supply chain is the set of raw materials, finish goods, and information systems that delivers finished goods in customer’s hands. Sometimes the supply chain is referred to the channel that companies used to reach their consumers or their distribution networks.
Supply chain management is usually an integral part of operations management and when run well as a pull system it can deliver a significant competitive advantage to businesses. It can be aided by an inventory management system.
Company culture is commonly referred to the attitude that employees within a business interact with each other and other stakeholders. It is viewed as the way “things are done” or how a business is run. Company culture extends far further from this meaning and has a great influence on the business, product quality, its people, customers, suppliers and reputation in the marketplace. It is usually set and greatly influenced by the business leaders and management, but most people within the organization can contribute to it.
It is imperative that managers understand that it is the people who make the business a success, not the machinery, brand name or its customers; it’s the people who go to work everyday and run the business who are the most important. Customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders are also important but without a great team in your business you will find it hard to take care of these other stakeholders.
The maintenance or engineering department should not be the only employees that get involved in the maintenance of the plant. Both plant operators and managers should be involved as well in order to gain familiarity with the equipment and be able to troubleshoot problems and perform minor maintenance tasks when the engineering team is not available or working on higher value added tasks. This can easily be achieved by standardizing maintenance tasks, which can be done by operators, and documenting the procedures either through writing standard operating procedures or one point lessons. Production operators should be encouraged to write one point lessons to communicate engineering knowledge to fellow team members.
Standardization of work practices allows process steps to be decomposed and optimized into simple easy to follow steps that any operator can easily perform. Standardized practices allow operators and workers to perform tasks the same way every time by using a set standard and clearly defined process which combines and uses different resources effectively such as time, technology, tools on shadow boards and raw materials.
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