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It takes more than systems sophistication for manufacturing companies to gain control of factory operations. To achieve on-time shipments at healthy profit margins, companies need to continuously improve obsolete MRPII/ ERP shop order "launch and expedite" systems with the simplicity of lean manufacturing. The assertion that lean manufacturing only works in high production, widget-manufacturing environments is a myth. Leading low- volume, "make-to-order" manufacturers are improving schedule flexibility, customer responsiveness and profit margins by developing and implementing the Lean Manufacturing Methodology.
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Additional Lean Manufacturing Articles
Agile 2007: Agile practices travel full circle by Tony
Baer, Aug 2007
"Specifically, while lean manufacturing allows you to have a long
range forecast for inventory requirements and demand, it forces to
you to work with only enough stock to fill firm orders that are in
the short-term pipeline. Likewise, agile software development allows
you to have high-level requirements and roadmaps for a software
project, but only gets specific with 'stories' that are developed
for each iteration, or sprint."
Role of Management in a Lean Manufacturing Environment by
Gary Convis, Jul 2001
"Since this column is meant to link automotive engineers with lean
manufacturing, I would like to share my personal experience as a
mechanical engineer who started out in the traditional way of
manufacturing, and along the way discovered a much better way - the
Toyota Production System." Gary Convis is the President of Toyota
Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky."
A Lean Walk Through History by Jim Womack,
"Once you are sensitized to the depth of lean history, along with
its many advances and setbacks, it?s easy to begin filling in some
of the other milestones: By 1765, French general Jean-Baptiste de
Gribeauval had grasped the significance of standardized designs and
interchangeable parts to facilitate battlefield repairs. (Actually
doing this cost-effectively in practice was another matter and
required another 125 years.)"
Going Lean in Health Care by James P. Womack et. al.,
"Lean principles hold the promise of reducing or eliminating wasted
time, money, and energy in health care, creating a system that is
efficient, effective, and truly responsive to the needs of patients?
the 'customers' at the heart of it all."
TPS vs. Lean and the Law of Unintended Consequences by
Art Smalley, Dec 2005
"In every piece of TPS literature from Toyota, this stated aim is
mixed in with the twin production principles of Just in Time (make
and deliver the right part, in the right amount, at the right time),
and Jidoka (build in quality at the process) as well as the notion
of continuous improvement by standardization and elimination of
waste in all operations."
How To Compare Six Sigma, Lean and the Theory of Constraints
by Dave Nave,
Mar 2002
"When you are working through the apparent conflicting claims of
performance improvement programs, my advice is to concentrate on the
primary and secondary effects of their philosophies. Once the values
of a specific improvement program are identified, the comparison of
those values with the values of the organization can make the method
of selection easier, if not obvious."
Eliminating Complexity from Work: Improving Productivity by
Enhancing Quality by Tim Fuller, Aug 1985
"Redesigning a process to eliminate non-value added steps. A lean
thinking example from 1985."
Teaching the Big Box New Tricks by
James P. Womack
and Daniel T. Jones, Nov 2005
"The consequence, in terms of performance, is remarkable. Total
"touches" on the product (each of which involves costly human
effort) have been reduced from 150 to 50. The total throughput time,
from the filling line at the supplier to the customer leaving the
store with the cola, has declined from 20 days to five days."
The Best Factory in the World by Norman Bodek,
From his book,
Kaikaku : "Pictures of areas of the factory or the office hung
throughout the plant. Workers were encouraged to look at the
pictures and talk about them together, then to make improvements."
Lean Software Development by Mary Poppendieck,
Sep 2003
"All lean thinking starts with a re-examination of what waste is and
an aggressive campaign to eliminate it. Quite simply, anything you
do that does not add value from the customer perspective is waste."
The Dramatic Spread of Lean Thinking by Jim Womack,
Apr 2005
"I am delighted with the spread of lean thinking far beyond the
factory and far beyond the high-wage economies to every corner of
the world and to every value-creating activity." The most recent
article additions to our library on lean topics:
Reduce Inventory and Need for Expedited Deliveries by
ValuMetrix, May 2005
"The Lean team conducted a step-by-step analysis of the procurement
process. After identifying causes of waste and inefficient ordering,
it rearranged the supply room, making the most frequently used items
more accessible. It instituted a color-coded inventory management
system with all necessary information centralized on convenient
reorder cards. A monitoring process is helping to identify
opportunities for further gains."
Better Patient Care Using Lean Thinking by ValuMetrix,
May 2007
"Lean is not just about better ROI; it's actually fundamentally
about better patient care....the end result is, if you improve
quality your costs will go down. If you focus on patient quality and
safety, you just can't go wrong. The idea is, you do the right thing
with regard to quality and the costs will take care of
themselves..."
The Role of Leadership in Software Development by
Mary
Poppendieck, Nov 2007
"In this 90-minute talk from the Agile2007 conference, Lean software
thought leader Mary Poppendieck reviewed 20th century management
theories, including Toyota and Deming, and went on to talk about
'the matrix problem', alignment, waste cutting, planning and
standards. She closed by addressing the role of measurement: 'cash
flow thinking' over 'balance sheet thinking'."
Thought Leaders -- Lean On Me by Jim Womack, Dec
2007
"Toyota has a supplier management system that is still the
best-in-class, and a good part of Toyota's recent quality issue has
been bringing in a whole bunch of non-Toyota traditional suppliers
and trying to teach them the Toyota Management System, and they're
struggling because it turns out -- and I should know this better
than anybody, it's what I've been doing for the last 20 years --
it's hard to get people to change old ways of thinking." This
interview includes many other great insights."
Bringing Lean
Principles to Service Industries by Julia Hanna,
Oct 2007
"In their research, Staats and Upton document how the use of lean
principles affected the workflow at Wipro. The concept of 'kaizen,'
or continuous improvement, for example, resulted in a more iterative
approach to software development projects versus a sequential,
"waterfall" method in which each step of the process is completed in
turn by a separate worker."
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