2 things that lean manufacturing is not

Sometimes when people hear the phrase “lean manufacturing” certain things will spring to mind. These things that spring to mind may not necessarily be correct.

There are so many very common misconceptions about what lean manufacturing actually is that it has seemed necessary to list them and give relevant explanations. First off let us start with the most popular one.

It is nothing to do with meat

This is a very common misconception. People hear the word “lean” and the thing that comes to mind is meat. This is not that unsurprising really as we have all seen the packets that tell us we are buying “Lean minced beef” or “lean lamb”. With regards to meat this usually means that it is a higher concentration of meet as opposed to offal and it is of better quality that standard meat. So lean manufacturing is nothing to do with the production of meat!

It is nothing to do with muscle

You don’t usually have to look very hard to see adverts telling us to get more lean muscle and get fit and healthy. This is why when some people hear the phrase Lean manufacturing they think that it may be something to do with developing muscle. Lean muscle is just non fatty and well developed and looked after muscle that is gained by healthy eating and plenty of exercise. Is has nothing at all to do with lean manufacturing.

So what actually is lean manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing is a process that has to do with eliminating waste. It encourages the preservation of a product or services actual quality but with less work needing to be put in to it. The process seeks to “optimise the flow” of production and manufacturing and to therefore make it as efficient as possible. You can see that there is common theme that threads through each of the points we listed and that theme is quality. Lean meat is higher quality with less fat, lean muscle is exactly the same and lean manufacturing is higher quality and less waste. It is easy to see how these things could be mixed up.

Lean manufacturing is also a very niche term that only manufacturers, those in production or companies that supply lean services may know about so people can easily be excused for not immediately knowing what it is.

For more information see lean manufacturing

What is World Class Manufacturing?

Put simply World Class manufacturers are those that that demonstrate best practise according to their industry standards. There are a number of categories called “competitive qualities” that they must compete to be at the top of in order for world class manufacturing to be achieved.

Competitive Qualities

The Competitive Qualities are as follows:

-Quality
-Price
-Delivery Speed
-Delivery Reliability
-Flexibility
-Innovation

Becoming a leader in these qualities should be an aim for all companies. However trying to compete in every single one of them is unrealistic for the majority.

Techniques involved

The following techniques and principles are usually undertaken when trying to compete.

-Make to order
-Streamlined flow
-Small lot sizes
-Families of parts
-Doing it right first time around
-High employee involvement
-Multi Skilled Employees

Higher productivity is achieved in implementing strategies that strive to eliminate waste and improve operations. Speed is also to be looked at within world class manufacturing. It is not just about making the process speedier to get to the finished product. It is about making the process speedier to get, without any quality compromise, to the finished product.

Issues faced with World Class Manufacturing

Capacity driven manufacturing dominates western thinking. World Class Manufacturing principles are process driven and this difference can sometimes cause conflict. Many people do not like change and want to do things the way they have always done them. Companies must involve their employees when planning for change so as to try to eradicate this problem.

Questions to ask yourself to find out of your company is world class

World Class manufacturing standards vary from industry to industry. These questions should be fairly generic and are only given as a guide.

1. Do you regularly ask your customers for feedback about your service and then seek to improve it?
2. Do you have an active lead time reduction group? If not why not!
3. Have you laid out your machinery in such a way to make the distance between sequential operations as short as possible?
4. Do you have an on-going educational process for new staff to learn from and old ones to keep up to date?
5. Have you taught your entire staff basic problem solving techniques?
6. Do you have a process that quickly evaluates all feedback and suggestions from your staff?
7. Do you monitor your overall equipment down time and seek to minimise it?

If a company seeks to be the best then they must consider these principles carefully.

For more information see world class manufacturing

Total Productive Maintenance and OEE Systems

Total Productive Maintenance (or TPM) is a long established Japanese process focused on improving productivity and reducing waste. With Total Productive Maintenance the machine operator is trained in fault finding and simple maintenance. Teams known as “zero defects” teams try to minimise defects and issues. These teams are made up of experts and normal workers.

The workers then glean knowledge and expertise and are the able to give a higher contribution. If defects and machine downtime are reduced the results from your OEE Systems will be improved.

TPM’s Other names

TPM can also stand for “Total productive Manufacturing” and “Total process Management”. It is basically deterioration management. A well-known motto with TPN is “zero error, zero work-related accident, and zero loss”.

The three goals of Total Productive Maintenance

1. Zero product defects
2. Zero equipment unplanned failures
3. Zero Accidents

The first step is to look back at plant history, lean manufacturing fugues and OEE Systems. These are analysed and then a plan to move forward is made. You just have to look at the card and the map analogy. You can only plan a route once you have a destination and when you know where you are leaving from.

Total Productive Maintenance and the 6 big losses

The 6 big losses are as follows:

1. Set up and initial adjustment time
2. Equipment breakdown time
3. Idling and minor losses
4. Speed and cycle time losses
5. Start-up quality losses
6. Process quality losses

Total Productive Maintenance and its 8 Pillars

The 8 Pillars of Total Productivity Maintenance are as follows

1. Focused improvement
2. Autonomous Maintenance
3. Planned Maintenance
4. Training and education
5. Early phase management
6. Quality maintenance
7. Office Total productive maintenance
8. Safety, Health and environment.

Such manufacturing processes and analyses such as Total Productive Maintenance and OEE won’t be useful to every business in manufacturing. You must assess your specific needs and requirement. Obviously in every business there is need for waste reduction, trained employees and maximal productivity.

The basics and principles of these processes, however, can be taken and applied.
OEE Systems will measure your overall equipment effectiveness on a stand-alone basis but it is much more powerful when used in conjunction with other processes like Total Productive Maintenance and Kaizen. They are powerful together!

For more information see OEE Systems

OEE and Key Performance Indicators

What are key performance indicators?

Key performance indicators are a type of performance measurement. OEE seeks to increase overall effectiveness and KPI’s help us measure it.

They are used to evaluate either a company’s overall performance or the performance of a certain aspect of their business. They are measure used in accordance with OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness).

In choosing KPI’s a business must have an extremely good understand of what is important to their particular organisation or industry. For example the Key performance indicator’s that are considered important to an IT support team will be entirely different to those of an accounts or Human Recourses team.

Assessment is essential

As with OEE constant re-assessment is an absolute must with any KPI’s and industries, standards and expectations change all the time. Business must take a pro-active approach to setting their Key Performance Indicator’s and involve as many staff members as possible. Those on the front line of organisations usually know what sells and what works better that anyone else.
Example KPI’s

- Amount of new customers acquired over a given period. If you set a benchmark as to what number of new customers indicated that you are doing well it will easy for you to measure your progress.

- Turnover. This is a fairly obvious one. Decide what amount of turnover in a given period will indicate that your business is performing well.

- Cycle time. How long should certain processes take? Decide what is optimal and then measure performance against it. If your cycle time KPI’s aren’t achieved then you can begin to ask yourself why and make necessary changes.

- Down time. Most companies would love to have absolutely no down time but this is completely unrealistic. Decide what your minimal amount of downtime that you can achieve is and set this as a KPI.

They must be quantifiable

OEE is more than just improving effectiveness; it is improving it to the benefit of everyone. Key performance indicators are exactly the same. They must never be to the detriment of a company’s employees, suppliers or customers. They must never be felt to be unobtainable. If they are then no one will bother trying to achieve something that they see as impossible.

Your key performance indicators must be quantifiable and realistic. Obviously as a company grows so will expectation and your KPI’s in turn. Reward you staff when you consistently meet your KPI’s so that they are seen as a good thing and not a bad.

For more information see OEE

The diversity of Lean Production

Lean Production originated in Japan. It is an approach to production management that focuses on cutting out waste and making systems efficient all whilst ensuring quality is not compromised. It is a methodology that has seen huge success in manufacturing, see below for Toyota as an example, and is now being used across the board.

Traditional Lean Production

As mentioned above Toyota is a great example for us here. They really developed the concept of Lean Production and moved it forward. Eiji Toyoda developed a system called the Socio-Technical System for his car manufacturing company which was of course Toyota.

He looked to people such as Henry Ford, who invented the assembly line and made a fortune with it, for inspiration. The system seeks to eliminate all waste within the manufacturing system. Waste such as operator errors, overproduction and motion issues. Toyota used this system to great success.

Basic principles of Lean Production

The long term philosophy is “Base your management decisions on long term philosophy, even at the expense of short term financial goals”. It is a hands on process and another popular mantra within it is “Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation” and “become a learning organisation through relentless reflection”.

- Use only reliable and tested technology that no only serves your purpose but your people too.

- Level out the workload. Work like the tortoise!

- Build a culture of stopping to fix problems so as to ensure excellent quality from the outset.

- Use visual control so that all problems are discovered and not hidden.

- Grow leaders who thoroughly understand their work and are able to implement and teach the philosophy.

- Respect all the people involved in your business from your staff to your suppliers and customers.

- Make decisions slowly by consensus. Consider every option.

Lean production is essential about problem solving. Many people get stuck in doing the same thing the same way with substandard results. You know what one definition of insanity is? To do the same thing over and over again and expect it to produce different results. Staff are encouraged to give feedback and suggestions as to how they think processes could be improved.

Widespread application

Hopefully you can see from this that Lean Production can be applied to many areas and industries. Call centres, the public sector and educational facilities are taking up these principles. If all business seek to listen to their staff, give them reasonable workloads and encourage their feedback it would be a very good thing.

For more information see Lean Production

What is OEE?

OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. OEE reduces difficult and complex production issues in to readable, well-presented and usable information. Its measurement helps to improve your processes in a step by step way. It can be used to monitor best practises on machines, assembly lines and manufacturing cells. It is a simple and practical tool that helps you to gauge where you are and how you can move forward and make your production more efficient and effective. Let’s take a look at some of things that are considered as a part of the OEE process.

Planned production time: To help find your planned production time you will need to know this equation; Plant operating time – Planned shut down time = Planned production time. Planned shut down time is all the planned breaks such as lunch hours and maintenance time etc. These all need to be left out of the productivity analysis. OEE will carefully look at your planned production time and measure and record overall efficiency and losses with a view to your being able to eradicate these losses once they have been recognised.

Down time loss: Down time loss is considered to be anything that stops production for a period of time such as machine failure, shortages of required materials and changeovers. Changeover time can usually always be reduced in most instances.

Performance: The performance category covers any factors that may cause your machinery not to operate at its maximum speed or capacity when running. It should bring to light any operator ineffectiveness, machine wear and tear as well as use of poor quality materials.

Quality: OEE will also take any quality loss issues in to consideration. This means that it will identify when produce does not meet the required standard and has to be re-made or changed.
Once all these, plus lots of other contributing factors are taken in to consideration you will be left with a measurement of “Fully Productive Time”.

This is the time your machines are fully operational, working to their full efficiency and are producing the desired result. The main aim of OEE is to help you maximise and increase you fully productive time. There is usually always room for improvement in most manufacturing plants. Once you overall equipment effectiveness has been measured you can then see where you stand in the “World Class OEE”.

Studies indicate that the average manufacturing rate of most plants is around 60%. A world class overall equipment effectiveness measurement is considered to be anything above 85%. As previously mentioned many plants and production lines have a lot of room for improvement!