Special focus: lean manufacturing
Lean manufacturing is defined by core concepts. Continuous flow is concerned with keeping products moving through a production system without separating them into lots. Cycle time is the time it takes to do one repetition of any task. Just-in-time is a manufacturing process for synchronising materials, operators and equipment, eliminating waste.
Standardised work is about testing to establish the optimum ways of completing a task. Takt time matches the rate of production to the rate of sales or consumption, only producing exactly what your customers will consume; nothing more and nothing less.
Selected lean-manufacturing features
Brand or bland?
What is the relationship between lean principles and brand value?
It’s all in the mind
Successful lean change is more than understanding the processes and implementing the tools, it has be more than a management mantra and become part of the culture of the company.
Smooth is smart
Informed opinion states that, sometime in 2006, Toyota will become the largest automaker in the world. So, this is an appropriate time to examine the hidden virtue of the Toyota Production System (TPS), which is the engine behind the growth of the company.
Lean manufacturing
E&T looks at whole system lean transformations.
Lean fighting machine
E&T looks at how lean is helping Boeing in their production of Apache helicopters.
Lean or flabby?
Lean manufacturing has become the byword for efficiency across industry. But how many companies, particularly in the UK, are simply paying lip service to lean principles? E&T argues that less talk and more graft is needed.
Lean beginnings
E&T assesses whether adopting lean manufacturing methods has helped western firms to catch up with their Japanese rivals.
Where have all the engineers gone?
E&T looks at why engineers are moving into service organisations.
Laying the right foundations
Many manufacturers seem to be putting the cart before the horse by selecting and applying an improvement tool before getting certain foundational elements in place that will assure each tool’s effectiveness and sustainability.
The path to lean success
A look at how Fagor Industrial, a Basque company belonging to the Mondragon Corporation Cooperativa, implemented lean methods in their production process.
High principles
Private equity firms are realising they need to know about lean thinking.
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