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 lean office is a term that refers to an office, administration or back office support operation which applies and makes use of the lean principles or lean manufacturing ideology to achieve smooth work processes and enhance the flow of information to achieve more efficient outcomes and productivity.
Lean manufacturing or lean production is a business and operations improvement methodology and culture which has as its foundation and main objective to minimize wasted resources, maximize the output in a value adding process with a set amount of inputs and reduce costs . This is usually achieved by building efficiencies attained from streamlining and optimizing processes, the use of technology, production plant optimization and setup, introducing pull and just in time production methods, enhancing employee culture and skills, efficient materials management, improving housekeeping and discipline standards, among others.
A Kaizen board is a communication tool which serves as a communication medium between the lean team, process engineers and all stakeholders in the production process or business regarding the application of problem solving , potential problems and lean manufacturing techniques in Kaizen initiatives. It is a communication medium in both ways as it allows plant workers and process operators to communicate possible causes and solution for issues being addressed as part of the kaizen/continuous improvement process. Usually the Kaizen board will relate to a section of the plant or a specific problem or issues being addressed.
The Bill of Materials or product tree as it is sometimes called is a document which lists the components or materials needed to manufacture a component or product. The bill of materials is in some ways a recipe which may contain other information on the ingredients or components such as price, supplier, material it is made from, manufacturing or physical characteristics.
In some cases the bill of materials will be adapted for a required use or audience where the exact amount and other trade secret characteristics required in live production may not be listed due to confidentiality. This may be the case for a bill of materials for budgeting purposes where an estimate of monthly or annual usage is required and no other data relating to live production. A bill of materials for the production department may also have an assembly drawing or detailed product formulation with notes to aid the assembly or manufacturing process.
In some cases where production formulas or component are a trade secret, the bill of materials for a product may contain a component or assembly which in itself will have a separate BOM and this will be tightly controlled for security purposes.
The bill of materials will be mainly used in production operations to set a standard production schedule or formula and for budgeting unit cost for accounting purposes.
The bill of materials can be used in several ways to analyse production and operations performance:
– Cost comparisons for planned and actual usage of raw materials in manufacturing budget
– Optimize production process, material flow and balance workload on a production line
– Enable better communication and standardization of production work methods
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