Lean manufacturing system
Lean manufacturing system is a systematic process that can be implemented to any well-organized system in order to pin point and eliminate the factors that are not valuable to the customer of the final product. The process of lean manufacturing systems itself was developed by Toyota Corporation (Lancaster, 6). The technique was quite effective which was very clear from the improvement in the revenues of Toyota Corporation after its implementation. And it is one of the major reasons that had helped in upliftment of Toyota Corporation from its crisis (Prakash, 4).
But it seems that the application of lean manufacturing system is not limited to manufacturing industries anymore. Any process that has the term “quality” associated with it can be a model for application of lean manufacturing systems. Out of many areas of applications, lean manufacturing systems has also been successfully applied to the hospitality industry.
Application of lean systems to automobile industry mainly focusses on reducing the defects present in the manufacturing process, shortcomings of the machines and sometimes the effectiveness of human operators (Prakash, 3). But it mainly deals with machines and its products. While on the other hand, application of lean systems to industries which mainly depend on the sale of their services such as hospitality industry involves the people working in the corporation as the humans themselves are the key factor that decide the profitability of such an industry.
In automobile industries, several companies such as Toyota Motor Company, Ford motor company, General motors, Chrysler motors and Porsche have successfully implemented the lean manufacturing system (Prakash, 3). The various factors that have helped these industries is reduction of wastage of material, reduction of machine failures, improvement in the quality of the products, improvement in the revenues, etc. Identifying and fixing/replacing the faulty machines is a major turning point in manufacturing industries.
On the other hand, hotels like the MGM and the Starwoods chain depend hugely on the staff that work for the company. Therefore, for implementation of lean systems, it is essential to work with the staff on their improvement in various subjects.
Some of the similarities that could be seen in the application of lean systems among automobile industry and hospitality/hotel industry are- organized work environment (Lancaster, 9), clean working area, involvement of humans and systematizing work flow process. Whereas some of the major differences in the application among these industries are- ease of replacement of error causing source, time of error improvement, guarantee of good results over time and delayed responses to alterations. Some of these similarities and differences are explained below.
In a manufacturing industry such as an automobile industry, the machine causing the defect could be easily fixed or replaced, whereas, in service industry like a hotel industry, it is very difficult to replace the staff on short notices because it is a lengthy process in itself. Also, because the source of error could be easily pointed out and fixed in a manufacturing industry, the time of realization of change due to the implementation of lean system in hotel industry is quite high as compared to a manufacturing industry. No one can predict the time that an individual would take to improve.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a vital factor in determining the effectiveness of the industry as a whole and predict its performance and outputs. Overall equipment effectiveness refers to efficiency of a machine or a man to do the work. Computation of overall equipment efficiency involves high level calculations and metrics. It can be calculated using model specific formulas depending on several factors such as availability, performance and quality (Overall equipment effectiveness, 6).
Again, comparing the two industries side by side, we realize that it is easier to obtain the values of the factors such as availability, performance and quality in case of a manufacturing industry such as an automobile industry rather than a service providing industry such as hotel industry. Because the values for the parameters can be easily obtained for machines whereas it is difficult to get these values for human beings and even if they are obtained, they are highly subject to errors and vary from person to person.
But after that Starwoods hotel chain and MGM have implemented the lean manufacturing system to many of their chains (Lancaster, 6), it seems that lean manufacturing system does have its advantages in hospitality industries too.
“Despite the evidence of success, Starwood Hotels is the only hospitality organization to fully implement Lean and Six Sigma into all aspects of the operation. This calls to question why Lean and Six Sigma are not more prevalent in hospitality. The importance of setting up an infrastructure of trained leaders in Six Sigma may be a point of reluctance
(McCrossan, 2008). Often times, the strongest people in an organization are tasked to lead the Six Sigma cause. The extensive training and additional responsibilities that these employees are imposed with may compromise the ability to do their original jobs. Another possible reason for reluctance is that managers in the hospitality industry are not necessarily adept or see the need to analyze statistics and root causes to problems (McCrossan, 2008). To these managers, the way they have managed operations for years and have served customers in ways they have found most preferable. Lean and Six Sigma may pose a threat to their way of doing things and represent a fad that may only be around for a little while.” (Lancaster, 11).
Works cited
Lancaster, Justin. Lean and Six Sigma in Hospitality Organizations: Benefits, Challenges, and Implementation, 2011.
Prakash, Kumar, Sunil. Implementation of Lean Manufacturing Principles in Auto Industry. ISSN 2224-6096 (print)
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), A General Discussion with Calculation Methods, Capstone metrics.
McCrossan, T. (2008). Six sigma does it fit in hospitality? Hospitality Upgrade, 28-30.
