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Highlights of our full range of training courses / Workshops:

Lean & Agile Supply Chain / Inventory Modelling

Lean & Agile Manufacturing Planning & Control

Operations Management / Team Leader Training

Step Change Management / Business Process  Reengineering

Continuous Improvement

Procurement (Purchasing & Supplier Management)

IS / IT / e-commerce

Product Management / New Product Introduction  / Quality  Management

 

Bookmarks for this topic below:

Our full range of training

Relevant Training / Workshops

Expert Systems / Tools

Relevant Further Reading

 

Relevant Training Course / In-house Workshop Highlights:
Introduction / executive overviews

M15 Agile Manufacturing Overview

M21 Lean Manufacturing

M19 How to become a "world class" manufacturer

Details
Manufacturing Planning & Control:

M01 Designing Implementing & Operating Kanban systems

M05 Simple Capacity Planning & Control

M10 Simple stock control

M11 Simple ways to maximise output & workflow

M22 Kanban & Lean Enterprise Simulation Game

SSC04 Production Planning & Control Back To Basics

Continuous improvement:

C01 Focused Improvement Systems

C02 Setting Key Performance Indicators

C03 Measures of Performance Detail

C04 Continuous Improvement Basic Tools & Techniques

Forming cells / teams:

S02 Business Process Reengineering

S13 Culture Development Methods

Operations Management:

OM01 Organising & engaging the team

OM03 Organising & managing the workplace

Supply Chain:

SSC01 Tools Techniques & Modern Trends in Supply Chain Management

SSC07 Strategic Supply Chain Management

Product Management:

D01 New Product Introduction

D03 Six steps to near perfect quality

 
Expert Systems / Tools:

Lean & Agile Diagnostic Checklist

 

Relevant Further Reading: The following further articles were mentioned in this paper:

a. Permanently Maintained Website Articles:

Lean Supply Chains

Just in Time (JIT)

Six steps to near-perfect quality

Kanban

Agile Manufacturing

Demand Management

New Product Introduction

Culture Development Methods & World Class Change Management

Focused Improvement Systems (continuous improvement)

BPR (Organizational Redesign)

Introduction to Benchmarking

5 Why's

Total Productive Maintenance

b. Previously Featured Articles from our Archives (Up to 2 per organisation available on request):

Previous Best Practices:

B013 Management (The Six Drivers of Performance)

B038: "Product Design Parameters"

B041: "21 Barriers to Lean And Agile"

B036: Collaborative Engineering (or why concurrent engineering is only half of the story)

Previous Techniques:

T006 Pareto analysis

Previous Questions:

Previous Malpractices:

Lean Manufacturing

This document describes our personal view of the meaning, principles and some of the problems of Lean Manufacturing and what it should encapsulate. It encompasses the works of Feigenbaum, Deming, Juran, Shingo, Taguchi, Ishikawa, Imai, Peters and of course our own experience. It encapsulates the elimination of waste, quality planning and control (not TQM), Just in Time (JIT), supplier integration, automation, team working, empowerment, behaviour, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), delivery frequency, selling techniques, New Product Introduction, and Agile Manufacturing.

Links to related training and further reading on left

Based originally on the Toyota Production System (TPS), "lean" manufacturing explained by Womack Jones and Roos, Imai, and others, provides a radically different way of running manufacturing. However we feel that some important aspects particularly behavioural aspects make it incomplete. We would define a truly lean philosophy as including:

  • Elimination of Waste (Continuous improvement). A point often forgotten in waste reduction is that waste can only be defined and certainly only prioritised in the context of understanding the purpose of a process. A second major issue with "Total" quality is the mismanagement of the improvement process, which at worst can actually prevent improvement, and create cynicism towards the initiative. The principle of total quality is that everything is being improved all the time. This effort is often beyond the resources of the current staffing and management support capability at the outset of a continuous improvement programme. Also because everything is trying to be improved at once, problems can arise with priorities. Priority is in the eyes of the beholder and conflicts can arise. Because of this, highly focused improvement systems can be accomplished by ensuring that the priorities are clarified first, and that these are the graphs on the wall, before continuous improvement is started. (See Focused Improvement Systems (continuous improvement) and Previous Best Practices B041: "21 Barriers to Lean And Agile") Also continuous improvement where the core is rotten often gives rise to dissatisfaction, necessitating a properly resourced major change programme first. (Also see Culture Development Methods & World Class Change Management, BPR (Organizational Redesign), and Introduction to Benchmarking)
  • Total quality up to now, is most comprehensively defined by the combined works of Feigenbaum, Deming, Juran, Shingo, Taguchi, Ishikawa, Imai, and Peters, (any one of whom we view as having an incomplete picture) includes the following:

Culture

(See "Culture Development Methods & World Class Change Management")

  • This requires leadership with a ruthless passion for perfection to create attitudes in all employees so that their behaviour positively influences product and service quality. It also requires the empowerment of all employees to sacrifice output and cost in the pursuit of quality and to own the problem. These principles have to be supported by policies, procedures & management behaviour, rather than slogans or banner exhortations. Unfortunately it is still common to see the ISO 9000, or QS9000 badge in the reception area of the company and indifference to quality on the shop floor. Also many companies who want the badge but do not operate the philosophy on the shop floor must disappoint the disciples of "Investors In People". Sustaining this culture is a significant challenge to any organisation, in the light of business and personnel changes. (See Focused Improvement Systems (continuous improvement))
  • Team working implies that there is a team, who are organised and behave like an empowered, engaged, self-directed, team, which we discuss in our OM01 Organising & engaging the team training course.
  • It is assumed by all staff that poor quality is a major waste and must be improved to "near perfect",  by continuous improvement, with employees empowered to stop production to solve problems permanently by the use of simple problem solving tools such as the "5 Why's ". (See: "Six steps to near-perfect quality")

Structure

(See "BPR (Organizational Redesign)")

  • Low and high level ownership of quality
  • Technical and management support to resolve problems
  • Removal of indirect workers, broadening of narrow job classifications and cross training
  • Keeping the responsibility with the originator, not the technical support functions
  • Short feedback loops based on shallow organisation structures
  • Mechanisms for continuous improvement with routine daily stand up team meetings to flush out problems. This may include "Quality Circles", but the provision of a facilitator to provide mentoring, on-going training and administration support is more common.

Systems

There are a huge range of techniques and systems (Many of which we include in our range of Continuous Improvement workshops, which can:

  • Prevent problems (Taguchi experiments, Design for manufacture, Quality Function Deployment, Pokayoke, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, Housekeeping (5 S's), etc.). Ford's Q1 quality system introduced in the 80's, followed by ISO and QS standards have attempted to define an auditable process.
  • Detect problems. (Statistical Process Control, Management By Walking Around, Customer satisfaction, surveys, Audits, Product strip down, and still prevalent is inspection and testing etc.)
  • Analyse the root cause of problems. (Previous Techniques: T006 Pareto analysis, measles charts, Ishikawa / fishbone diagrams, 5 Why's, flow / time charts, value stream mapping, etc.). Kaizen events are also a way to focus development effort & the use of these tools on a particular problem.

(Many of these techniques are also covered in " Previous Techniques" available on request)

A more recent definition of quality management based on our latest research & our experience is discussed in more detail in "Six steps to near-perfect quality". Also more recently in our S02 Business Process Reengineering training we define the "six drivers of performance" (See Previous Best Practices: B013 Management (The Six Drivers of Performance).

  • Just in Time (JIT) production (making only the quantity required, when it is required, as inexpensively as possible), and it's associated logistics management process "Kanban"
  • Increasing delivery frequency
  • Supplier integration. This starts with segmentation, supplier reduction, then progresses to category management, forming strategic partnerships, followed by integration which may or may not include shareholding, but certainly includes systems integration. Forms of systems integration include supplies collection rather than supplier delivery, supplier top up to point of use, warehousing, third party kitting, "tiering", and EDI. (See Lean Supply Chains)
  • Appropriate use of automation (avoiding one of the 21 wastes we discuss the article Previous Best Practices: B041: "21 Barriers to Lean And Agile").
  • Preventative maintenance (TPM). Although the measurement of "mean time between failures" has been understood for decades, preventive maintenance has been slow to gain acceptance, as opposed to fix it when it goes wrong, except in the transport industry. This is barely acceptable for non-bottleneck processes but is totally unforgivable for bottleneck processes. Recent developments in this field include "Total Productive Maintenance", the main themes of which include continuous improvement, ownership and routine maintenance / servicing by the "owner". The maintenance function's role is then elevated to include major work, prevention and training.
  • Design for manufacture including standardisation of parts. We have recently expanded this definition to include the whole product life cycle, e.g. "design for servicing" (See Six steps to near-perfect quality)
  • The original concept also incorporated "aggressive selling" which would be better described as continuous selling rather than the sales-promotions approach of the West. (See "Demand Management"). A third way which is gathering momentum now is described by " Agile Manufacturing"
  • Design project management rather than functional co-ordination incorporating the ideas of:
  • Market led design. (See Previous Best Practices: B038: "Product Design Parameters")
  • Concurrent engineering and team-working in the design process led by a project manager owning the design team for the duration of the design process and up to and including full production. (See New Product Introduction).
  • Improved communication, partly bought about by team working, but also deliberately sought conflict at the early design stage, to bring to the surface the trade-off's between function and manufacturability and a parallel (not serial) design process. This includes involving suppliers in the design process, and assembler involvement in the component design process. It also includes joint problem solving with the free movement of personnel and ideas between supplier and assembler. (See Previous Best Practices: B036: Collaborative Engineering (or why concurrent engineering is only half of the story))

There are however dangers in the strict application of the techniques above to supply chains. Without agility (See Agile Manufacturing) leanness can lead to shortages. We have encountered several examples of this. However most of these examples are due to the faulty operation of the control systems rather than the features of the control system itself. The three biggest reasons for failure are that a Lean process needs to operate in an environment that contains:

  • A longer term view (sufficient to flex major capacity step changes).
  • A knowledge of the current inherent unreliability and flexibility of their processes and supply chain.
  • Sufficient stock or capacity buffer to accommodate this variability.

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Finally here is a question for you:

How much stock is required to buffer two successive, adjacent, processes of equal capacity with 99.9% reliability, working at their capacity? (It rarely gets better than this!)

Answer

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Home Page Public Training Course Schedules Over 150 Best Practice Articles Expert Systems / Tools This Month's Features / News About Us Your Question / Contact Us
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Whilst great care has been taken to provide relevant, accurate, practical, advice based on our considerable process design and development experience, this will almost certainly require interpretation into the context of your unique business. Please be careful in doing so and if in doubt seek expert advice. We would welcome your feedback!

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