Lean Manufacturing Is An Approach

“Lean is a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste (non-value-added activities) through continuous improvement by flowing the **product at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection.” Lockwood [24].

This paper presents a relevant contribution for practitioners and managers to deal with the implementation of lean. It shows that through the effective use of available tools to measure the lean manufacturing implementation of the company. Lean methods are available for them to identify specific problems and opportunities to improve the lean practice implementation.

The concept of Lean Manufacturing was not quickly adopted by the United States manufacturing companies because of the cost incurred by changing the old manufacturing processes; the perceived need did not outweigh the benefits. In the 1970’s and the1980’s manufacturing companies in the United States took a closer look when Japanese and Chinese companies were selling similar products as the United States like cars, trucks, electronics, and toy, but at lower cost to the U.S. consumers. Companies within the United States urgently sought out experts from Japan to understand this new method due to declining revenues and the realization they were being forced out of market share. They learned that the concept of Lean Manufacturing was to change the goals by exposing waste in all areas within the manufacturing process with an increased focus to satisfy

The goal of research described application lean manufacturing to improving the manufacturing process on an assembly line in a car plant. Currently manufacturing process have so many disanvantagees,such as low efficiency, high cost, mass production quality is not stable, the accuracy is not high, and more labor and labor intensity,and these led to increased costs and less profit. Also sometimes the company cant achieve planned daily production target due to some activity wastes, which not added value to the production process.These are not conducive to the company’s future development. In order to make the company more competitive, company must have a new strategy to solve these problems. To achieve and sustain manufacturing excellence, you have to eliminate waste across your global production

Lean assembling bases on limiting waste and diminishing expenses through robotization and consistent upgrades in operational productivity. Lean assembling depends on coordinated mechanical frameworks, littler workforces of very prepared representatives and a radical move in organization culture. Each of these components can show unmistakable difficulties that must be overcome to accomplish a really effective lean assembling framework. Understanding these key issues is an essential building obstruct for building up your own particular lean execution arrange.

Lean Manufacturing Systems were first introduced in Japan by the Toyota Motor Corporation. The Lean movement is a type of a system that relies on simple visual cues in order to manage production stages that are based on customer demand. The system is a is also a kind of manufacturing that put great emphasis on the minimization of resources, time included, that is utilized in various activities of manufacturing and provides techniques for uninterrupted quality improvement. Although this system has gained enormous momentum and respect over the last decades, some companies have found it difficult to use Lean Manufacturing Systems, and, as a result, the companies have ended up failing. The concept of Lean Systems is best understood when companies familiarize themselves with certain key insights that are utilized during the course of systems architecting. The article provides a synopsis of the lean and is divided into four parts that will be mainly used for the purpose of this review.

Becoming Lean and implementing an action plan for it is not easy; it involves the commitment of time and assets. Companies ought to know what their client need and be dedicated to providing that. To know what a good implementation plan is, one must observe the BAE Systems, York, Pennsylvania, Assembly, Test, and Integration Plant to discover an excellent benchmarking instance of how to implement Lean production and the enhancements that can be achieved as a consequence. The subsequent dissertation is our journey, our plan to implementing Lean. It may be suitable for your company or it may not. The position here is straightforward. There is not a one-size-fits-all modus operandi for implementing Lean. What works for one organization might not work for a different company. It is not a cookie-cutter method (Upadhye, et al. 2008).

When relating lean production to a process, there are three key principles that are considered. First, manufacturing performance adheres to the improving flow of material and information across business functions. Second, lean emphasizes customer pull rather than organization push. Last of all, lean develops the individuals of an organization to practice and pursue a commitment to continuous improvement (Lewis, 2000). Many researchers cite lean as constantly evolving, arguing that any definition of the concept would only be a snapshot of a moving target. Because of this, it is hard to give a consistent definition to the subject of lean. Researchers also argue that lean principles can be applied to any industry, regardless of the concept’s origin to the automobile industry. They encourage organizations to acknowledge the different perspectives that the concept comprises when embracing a lean approach within their processes (Pettersen, 2009).

Lean Principles have been essential to numerous organisations all over the world for achieving outstanding results in terms of efficiency, quality and manufacturing times. Large organisations are especially acknowledged to implement lean principles successfully. However, in recent years small and medium sized enterprises have been in emphasis due to their flexibility and capabilities that provides the necessary robustness in the global economic crisis (Matt , 2007). Therefore, this paper will critically appraise and assess two separate case studies by authors Matt and Rauch (2013) and Kumar et al. (2006) respectively.

Lean manufacturing is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. Working from the perspective of the customer who consumes a product or service, "value" is defined as any action or process that a customer would be willing to pay for. The goal of Lean is to becomes the creation and maintenance of a production system which runs repetitively, day after day, week after week in a manner identical to the previous time period. Lean is actually the set of "tools" that assist in the identification and steady elimination of waste. As waste is eliminated quality

Lean System has become a popular technique used in both local and global markets. More companies are embracing it to improve efficiency, achieve better quality, and be more competitive. The Lean thinking was considered to be one potential approach to enhancing organizational performance. It has evolved into a management approach that improves processes at different levels of the organization. Nevertheless, the process of implementing lean manufacturing is bound to encounter obstacles. Besides defining the lean concept, this paper will consider the points that impede lean implementation and will outline the main two defies that companies are facing when they change their business model towards implementing a new management system, lean approach. This paper will also provide some recommendations to overcome these obstacles.

Lean Manufacturing seeks to produce high output with low inventory. Lean Manufacturing was originally known as the Toyota production system invented by Sakichi Toyoda. The whole purpose is to lower waste and increase profit and output. This paper will discuss the history of lean manufacturing Lean manufacturing and the transition and steps involved with Just-In-time manufacturing. Lean manufacturing defines waste as anything that absorbs resources but creates no value. So what is considered waste? The main concepts of Just-In-Time manufacturing are to eliminate waste and excess inventory stocks. Toyota was the developer of these techniques, a lot of Toyotas concepts were derived from Henry Ford’s methods.

• Failure to see that management must use lean methods to change the culture. The usual view of lean is that it is a narrow technical means to save cost. It is a highly integrative socio/technical strategy.

Figure 1 provides a conceptual framework of lean principles across the supply chain of the enterprise thereby yielding value to the customer. Lean thinking helps in providing flexibility to the needs of the customer. Emphasis is also put on organization of workplace which leads to more simplified work environment. Ease of access in the workplace and good ergonomic designs are some of the by-products of lean thinking methodology. Lean enterprises are more adaptable to changing market trends and also provide prompt delivery to products and services. [3]

When it comes to Lean Enterprise, it focuses mainly on reducing cycle time and also waste in the process. Lean Enterprise was at first developed by Toyota Motor Corporation as the Toyota Production System which became popular after 1973. The energy crisis facilitated the increasing demand at that time. “The term ‘Lean Enterprise’ is used to broaden the scope of a Lean programme from manufacturing to embrace the enterprise or entire organization”. (Alukal, 2003)