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.
SMED stands for single minute exchange of Die, which is the reduction of machine set-up time through the use of engineering, technology, simplicity, and standardization.
Quicker changeover times in a production plant or on production equipment can sometimes be easier to achieve in some industries than others. For example in the brick manufacturing industry it can take several hours to perform a product change, due to the nature of the manufacturing process and raw material preparation, but in the injection blow molding of plastic bottles it can sometime be performed within minutes, given highly automated robots and well lay out of the manufacturing equipment.
An MRP or Materials requirement planning system is a production /purchasing planning system which decomposes finish goods into their different component parts and helps set a schedule as to when these need to be produced or purchased in order to fill a certain customer order of finish goods by a certain date.
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.
Kaizen is the Japanese term for continuous improvement within a business, operations or productive process. Kaizen seeks a continuous improvement in all aspects of a productive process from raw material sourcing and usage to production methods. The Kaizen term is most commonly referred to focus projects or initiatives aiming at tackling and improving process issues. It is one of the most important terms in lean manufacturing and operations management as it should be at the top of the priority list for most business leaders and mangers to sustain a competitive advantage in their marketplace and become leaders in their industry.
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