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.
Lean training or education can be provided by a wide variety of sources and at different levels of expertise. Lean training involves imparting the basic concepts of the lean manufacturing system/ Toyota manufacturing system lean concepts introduced in japan back in the eighties by Japanese auto makers, namely Toyota. Other topics included in many lean manufacturing courses include problem solving, decision making, and operations management topics including supply chain. At a professional level, lean manufacturing and its related concepts and techniques are studied in an industrial, manufacturing or supply chain engineering degree.
5S refers to the 5 lean cultural principles which allows a workplace, be it a factory or an office to become orderly, uncluttered, and an environment which provides its employees the right environment and tools to complete their work as efficiently as possible.
-Sort: Un-clutter the workspace, sort tools, equipment and work station layouts. Eliminate unnecessary items which take up space and reduce workflow.
-Shine: Make sure equipment and plant items are properly maintained, properly labeled and have clear operating procedures that operators can follow in day to day operation and for training purposes. Equipment that is properly maintained and operated not only lasts longer but provides a positive and productive work environment.
Error proofing entails minimizing the opportunities the operator or human interaction into the process has of making a mistake that can cause any type of waste , downtime or quality issues. Poka yoke are error proofing controls or engineering solutions to error proof work tasks, processes and functions in order to avoid costly mistakes.
Error proofing can sometimes lead to loss of skills and operator focus on key items as error proofing is commonly achieved by automation and standardization of tasks. These two things are preferred solutions to avoid problems and will most definitely do so, but they can take control and opportunity to rectify an issue away from the operator and when the situation does get out of control the operators will almost certainly require engineering or technical support.
Items like checklists are very good error proofing measures when they are done properly and not just as a tick and flick exercise. Continuous training and upskilling with OPL’s and review of SOP’s can also help in avoiding operator errors. Most errors are made when operators are new to the plant or process, become complacent and forgetful of skills which are not used as often.
The cycle time is the time it takes to complete a task from start to finish or an average of the completion times of a repetitive productive process or task. Cycle times are commonly used to gauge the time it takes to complete tasks along the productive process, although commonly it is measured as the time it takes to manufacture or produce one unit of output at the end of the production line. Depending on the productive process, it may or may not have idle waiting times in between tasks, the sum of the value-adding tasks and idle times is known as the throughput time which in practical situations is used interchangeably with cycle time.
The cycle time for an item or product together with the resources available to produce the item will determine the total capacity of the productive process, and if there is a demand forecast then the capacity utilization of the process can be predicted. In manual labour intensive processes an average is usually used to derive the cycle time for a task, due to the difference in skills and experience of different operators.
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