Interesting Discussion Lean Manufacturing Concepts - Is 'Lean' hype?

[matti]

Lean manufacturing is about to make positive changes without spending and real dollars.

The element of lean manufacturing is Kaizen Gemba Visual Work place and standard Work for leader. Kaizen is just term for continues improvement. Gemba is management walking and talking with employees working out what is going on, Of course they must pay respect to the workforce as they are there to ensure the product is good for sale and it is the product that make the money.

A Kaizen Blitz event is to determine an area to attack. Appoint a Team leader, Tracker and a scribe. A List of item to approve is created with the member of the team including the SME. It is similar to 5S in taking before an after pictures. Kaizen event it meant to be more effective by working on stream lining processes, Improve the processes and improve the safety. All the item for improvement are assigned to personnel to action and a time line is given when the all the process to be finished by. One would expect that 75% of task is finished on the same day. Where the item that require item and tool to be ordered in to be complete in a couple of day. Hence it is called the blitz.

Nothing more different than back yard family and friend over to help setting up a pergola or paint the house. all in good time and have few laughs at the end.

 

[Mike S.]

Nothing more different than back yard family and friend over to help setting up a pergola or paint the house. all in good time and have few laughs at the end.

Lean is a tool or set of tools and like any tools they can be used properly for good or improperly and cause harm. Sadly, like many quality and improvement practices, lean is rarely implemented properly by people who know how to do it right, and it causes more harm or waste than good.

The laughs that we hear at the end are often those of the employees laughing at Management as they stumble around, pretending to know what the hell they are doing, as they goof things up even more than they were already.

Rant over....

 

[DrTBurns]

If you are looking at Lean, you are looking for magic pudding. The next fad. The next quick fix.
Lean was copied from Toyota. Toyota is a TQM company using Quality Circles and Proessor Deming's methods. Isn't it better to do what Toyota does and focus on the fundamentals of quality.

 

[Marc]

The next fad. The next quick fix.

The problem with your response is 'Lean" as a term has been around for over 20 years. Note that this discussion was started in 2003. As I and others in this discussion have pointed out over the many years, 'lean' is no more than a title used for a collection of old but useful tools - The tools themselves are part of the 'fundamentals of quality'.

As an additional thought: Using the tools included in 'lean' does not preclude the use of TQM 'tools' and/or Deming's methods. Combining them just makes a bigger box of 'tools' from which to choose ones which are appropriate for a given scenario.

 

[gpainter]

Lean is a culture. If a company is to move to Lean it must have discipline, support and it must be a cultural change. Once you have a mature ISO system in place I believe Lean can be the logical next step.

 

[dynastywarior]

HI dears
I have a question about lean concept:
We are a pump producer and we are producing large number of pumps in following categories: 1-High pressure pumps 2-Centrifugal pumps 3-Submersible pumps 4-Submersible electromotors

Noting that within each category there are large number of types , How can I choose a product to apply lean concept ?
Thanks

 

[Bev D]

the first question to answer is why you want to do 'lean'? what benefits do you think you'll get?
Is this your own initiative or is your organization trying to utilize lean?

 

[AndyN]

HI dears
I have a question about lean concept:
We are a pump producer and we are producing large number of pumps in following categories: 1-High pressure pumps 2-Centrifugal pumps 3-Submersible pumps 4-Submersible electromotors

Noting that within each category there are large number of types , How can I choose a product to apply lean concept ?
Thanks

Along with Bev's comments, one person shouldn't be selecting a product line or anything else on which to implement Lean. Your management team should a) be aware and somewhat knowledgeable of what it means to apply Lean practices and, therefore, they will make the appropriate choices for implementation. In addition, if this is "your" initiative, without getting management hands-on involved, whatever you do, won't be effective.

 

[dynastywarior]

Thanks for your kind response...
you know what, our company is gonna deploy 20 keys to improve your factory concepts by Kubayashi ,, and one of the keys which is 6th key is about to analyzing operational values, in this key I though I will need lean techniques ... because of that I asked people here to see what can I do ,,,

 

[Kevin Mader]

Dr. Burns' comments elicited a thought from long ago. When reading Lean Thinking, I kept getting the impression that Womack didn't get it. His multiple attempts to have the Japanese come for a visit to collaborate on Lean was met with indifference. My impression was that the Japanese didn't feel that Womack's version of Lean was comparable to Ohno's creation at Toyota. They finally visited...perhaps out of sympathy...perhaps to quiet Womack. At any rate, I don't think he ever realized this and my impression of his version of Lean is that it's suboptimal. To be fair, I haven't delved into how he might feel about it now...20+ years have passed. Maybe he evolved? (or me)