Chapter 18: Lean Operating Systems

Lean Thinking

approaches that focus on the elimination of waste in all forms, and smooth, efficient flow of materials and information throughout the value chain to obtain faster customer response, higher quality, and lower costs.

Lean Operating Systems

manufacturing and service operations that apply the principles of lean enterprise.

Waste

Any activity, material, or operation that does not add value in an organization

Principles of Lean Operating Systems

1. Elimination of waste.

2. Increased speed and response.

3. Improved quality.

4. Reduced cost.

Categories of Waste

1. Overproduction

2. Waiting Time

3. Transportation

4. Processing

5. Inventory

6. Motion

7. Production Defects

What is the most effective way of increasing speed and response?

Synchronize the entire value chain

5Ss

derived from Japanese terms: seiri (sort), seiton (set in order), seiso (shine), seiketsu (standardize), and shitsuke (sustain).

Sort

ensuring that each item in a workplace is in its proper place or identified as unnecessary and removed.

Set in order

to arrange materials and equipment so that they are easy to find and use.

Shine

refers to a clean work area. Not only is this important for safety, but also as a work area is cleaned, maintenance problems such as oil leaks can be identified before they cause problems.

Standardize

to formalize procedures and practices to create consistency and ensure that all steps are performed correctly.

Sustain

to keep the process going through training, communication, and organizational structures.

Visual controls

indicators for operating activities that are placed in plain sight of all employees so that everyone can quickly and easily understand the status and performance of the work system.

Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED)

refers to the quick setup or changeover of tooling and fixtures in processes so that multiple products in smaller batches can be run on the same equipment.

Batching

the process of producing large quantities of items as a group before they are transferred to the next operation.

Transfer batch

a portion of the original lot size that is completed at one workstation and moved to the next downstream workstation

Single-piece flow

the concept of ideally using batch sizes of one

Quality at the source

requires doing it right the first time, and therefore eliminates the opportunities for waste.

Continuous improvement

vital in lean environments, as is teamwork among all managers and employees.

Total productive maintenance (TPM)

focused on ensuring that operating systems will perform their intended function reliably.

The goal of TPM

to prevent equipment failures and downtime—ideally, to have “zero accidents, zero defects, and zero failures” in the entire life cycle of the operating system

Maintenance strategies fall into three basic categories

1. Reactive maintenance

2. Preventive maintenance

3. Predictive maintenance

Reactive maintenance

the strategy of repairing parts or equipment only after they are broken down or have been run to the point of failure.

Preventative maintenance

consists of maintenance tasks performed while the equipment is under normal operation to avoid unexpected breakdowns and the associated downtime and costs. This is also called planned or scheduled maintenance.

Predictive maintenance

relies on technology such as sensors and other IoT devices, data collection, analytics, and artificial intelligence to predict when maintenance should occur before a failure occurs.

Push system

produces finished-goods inventory in advance of customer demand using a forecast of sales

Pull system

in which employees at a given operation go to the source of required parts, such as machining or subassembly, and withdraw the units as they need them.

Just-In-Time is a ___

pull system

Kanban

a flag or a piece of paper that contains all relevant information for an order: part number, description, process area used, time of delivery, quantity available, quantity delivered, production quantity, and so on.