Introduction
The ideology of leanness is a concept that researchers have been trying to develop new and improved methods that will reduce to a very large extent all the wastages that are associated with the manufacturing industry at every stage and activity. Lean manufacturing is the production of more by doing less or by use of less material through reducing wastages at every level of a production stage. Leanness has become a very critical evaluation tool that is used for the comparison of recently developed approaches. It is nowadays used by all the new researchers in determining the viability of the new ideologies. Lean manufacturing has developed slowly over a very long period of time. It has undergone and is currently undergoing series of changes du to its concept of production by continuous improvement.
Toyota Production System (TPS) first introduced the ideology of Lean Manufacturing in the 1950s in its Japan factory. Since this introduction, a lot of evolution has been documented over the years. Changing technology, research and improved skill of the working class of a nation contribute to these fiercely sought improvements (Motwani 2003).
There are many assessment systems that have been developed to assist in evaluating lean implementation in the organizations that they are used in. however, there has not been any assessment criteria that have been developed for the assessment of lean design processes. It is vey important to be able to develop a lean system in a manufacturing industry since these leads to lean a finer end product with lean time use, lean machining and very cost effective production. The frequent improvements that have been seen in the industry that have adopted lean manufacturing have compelled researcher to further explore this field as it look promising.
Necessity of lean production system in machine tool industry
Leanness can be said to be the search for the most perfect manner of production that will do away with all forms of wastage during the production stages from start to finish. These include the introduction of activities that are geared towards reduction in the cost of production while impacting positively on the cost of production with improved machine performance. There are quite a number of reasons that lead to lean production. Over production is the production far before there is a demand in the market. This in essence does not add any value to the production. This is not needed by the customer. In the manufacturing industry, waste is defined as the production of goods that the customer is not willing and ready to pay for at that moment of production. Other factors that necessitated lean production may include; transportation which involves movement of product that are not required in the destination at that point in time, wastage of time waiting for the preceding production step, stocking or inventory, motion which entails the movement of goods and products at the time that they are not expected, over processing brought about by poor tool and product design, defects and creativity that is not tapped. Lean implementation begins by the identification of worth stream (Motwani 2003). This include the value adding activities which include those activities that are valued by the customer that is they are willing to pay for, the non value adding activates which the customer is no ready to pay for and finally the necessary but have no value to the manufacturing process.
Implementing different tools of lean manufacturing
- Muda
In Muda implementation of lean manufacturing is done after the identification of the activities that are value adding and those that do not add any value. Improvement of value adding activities are then carried out then those that are of no value are eliminated. The seven wastes or Muda include;
Transportation: every time there is a movement of a product there is a possibility of it being damaged, delayed or even lost. It also becomes a cost that has no value to the production chain. Transportation never makes a product that the customer is interested in purchasing.
Inventory: the non active processing of raw materials, finished goods or work in progress do not add value to the producer or even the customer therefore they are regarded as waste.
Motion: this is the damage done on the entity that is tasked with the production of a product. This can be immediate or over a long period of time.
Waiting: any goods that are not in the process of production is in waiting which is a waste as defined by the Muda.
Over processing: over processing is work done on a product, that is not required by the customer. To reduce this tools that are more accurate and precise are important.
Over-production: this happens when production that exceeds the customers need is done. This may lead to muda since large production may lead to waste when customer tastes change.
Defect: defects cause a loss since reworking of the work already done may be necessary.
- Stability
There have been different causes of the stability of a production process. However, there are common identified problems that are responsible for this lack of stability is the main reason for the hindrance of operations and the stop sustenance or even improvements from occurring. With changing methods of production, stability is hard to attain. The 4Ms; man, machine, material and method are the key are to look into when stability is being sort. Many experts have argued and concurred that for a healthy sequence in lean manufacturing, the stability issues should first be fixed before standardization work and all the processes that follow this.
- standardize work
Standardizing work improves on the work being done. These allow work to be fragmented into parts that are easily followed by any operator. This allows the technicians to do work in the same manner by the combination and use of resources like time and raw materials in an effective way. This is a tool that is used to control the performance of a work force. It’s a simple way of controlling and driving the workers.
- Just-in- time
This is a manufacturing practice aimed at improving process of production by reducing in-process inventory plus the costs that are associated to this. Storage of any inventory that is not used resource is a waste. For JIT, any form of inventory is regarded as a cost or a waste. This kind of production system helps in the elimination of inventory which is replaced with compensating with manufacturing process issues (Motwani 2003). The JIT has several implications that are to be considered for instance transaction cost approach, environmental concerns, price volatility, quality volatile.ity, demand and supply stability. The JIT implementation design follows the following procedures for implementation: Design flow process, total quality control, stabilize schedule, the Kanban Pull System, work with vendors, further reduce in inventory and improve product design
- Jidoka
There are four simple steps that are attributed to the Jidoka: discover any abnormality, stop, fix the immediate problem investigate then correct the root cause. This form of leaning manufacturing can be captured in almost all forms of production. It bases on building quality into a process and not inspection only at the tail end of the production process. This was a lean manufacturing process that was developed and used by Toyota in their production. Although it is no longer used in the main stream of the Toyota production, inspection still plays a major role in the prevention of defective products reaching the customer. In the Jidoka, every individual in the lean manufacturing industry has the capacity to stop any process when defects are identified. This is how it works in identification of the mistakes or abnormalities and their consequent correction measures done. Other companies do not use this form of lean manufacturing as they would not want to stop the whole process for the sake of small defect detection or a minor problem. Therefore, the other principles of Jidoka are not acted upon, that is, correction of the main cause or root cause of a problem so that there is no recurrence.
- Involvement
Involvement of every person in a manufacturing industry is very important and should be the core value of every company. Wholesomely, employee and management involvement through the use of lean manufacturing. It should be the main focus for lean manufacturing for extensive pursuit of excellence. This can be achieved through continuous improvement with view from all quarter taken up seriously. Every employee should be trained so that they will have a good level of involvement in the issues that they are surrounded by as they go about their work. A well skilled workforce keeps the level of involvement in solving problems or decision making high. Arguments have it that lean production is truly lean when all the employee have been streamlined into the bundles of practices that include their empowerment but all this should be implemented in the proper manner.
- goals and planning
In lean manufacturing goals and planning are very important. There should be set goals and targets in every manufacturing industry. Planning is a set path through which these goals are to be achieved. Making plans and conveying them to the technicians or the implementers goes a long way in ensuring that these set targets are met. Goals and targets should be set that are practically reasonable but provides a challenge in meeting them (Prince 2003). Many have argued that failure to plan is a direct plan to fail every employee should have well set goals that they will be assessed against to ensure that they are productive in the performance of their duties.
Implementing lean culture in machine tool industry
Change does not start not unless somebody triggers it. For the implementation of lean manufacturing, leadership is very important. There are three most important leadership traits that a leader ought to have; the capacity to be able to develop a plan, the ability and capacity to be able to articulate these plans to the concerned parties and finally the ability to act on the plan. The stages that can be undertaken in order to develop a lean process include the following;
- understanding the customer needs
Proper identification of customer needs is the beginning of lean manufacturing thinking process. Most waste that is witnessed in manufacturing are due to the wrong customer needs identification. The Quality Function Deployment is a vital tool that is used for the identification of customer needs for quality production.
- Value stream mapping
This is a tool employed for the analysis of the flow of materials and information that is require to bring knowledge of the customer needs. It shows the current state of a product and the future expectations of the same product (Prince 2003). This system originated from the manufacturing industry of Toyota. This tool helps in the identification of different departments that are tasked with certain processes, the various stages that processes are involved in, the flow charts that show different detailed activities, the standards for future activities, and timelines.
- The end to end process
There are two ways in which leanness can be applied. One is by improving the technical processes that are used in manufacturing process and secondly by the improvement of the human resources that are tasked with the production process.
- Functional testing
Before the final product can be delivered to the market final testing should be conducted to ensure that is well functional and meets the set standards. The way that these products are tested should be credible and highly trusted such that the customer will be satisfied.
- Developing a complete process standard
For the continuous improvement in the manufacturing sector, we need a well organized company that makes documentation of all the processes that it undertakes. This will help in the identification of the best process that has been in use before. Project standards can be kept in the form of drawings. All products should be considered to be unique therefore product that is started from scratch should be well documented (Prince 2003).
Conclusion
There has been an evolution of lean manufacturing from the twentieth century to date and its still evolving. This continued evolution has been due to the changing trend in term of new technologies, new knowledge and better understanding of materials and systems and the continuously developing human resource team to be highly skilled. Lean manufacturing has been able to drive many companies into success through the production of goods that are of high quality and with reduced costs of production. Companies can chose from the many range of lean manufacturing practice according to their need and situations in their companies. There is still a lot of research work that can be put into the lean manufacturing sector. There are always growing issues with the changing needs of the customers. It is also hard to find a perfectly well process that will serve the manufacturing industry without its shortcoming. This is because of the influencing factors that keep changing over time.
Works Cited
Monden, Young. “Toyota production system”: An integrated approach to just-in-time. 3rd ed., Georgia: Engineering and Management Press, 1998.
Motwani, Jane. “A business process change framework for examining lean manufacturing”: A case study. Industrial Management and Data Systems.New York: NY Press 2003.
Mynott, C. Lean product development . Northampton, UK: Westfield Publishing, 2000.
Narasimhan , Swink , Kim “Disentangling leanness and agility”: An empirical investigation.J. Operations Management, 2006
Prince, Kay. “Combining lean and agile characteristics”: Creation of virtual groups by enhancedproduction flow analysis.Int. J. Production Economics 2003
