جديد x جديد ليوم 26-6-2009 Lean Manufacturing

Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Strategy

The Lean strategy has been gaining much attention from many companies in the world. A system which was developed originally in Toyota to increase the companies competitiveness as against the US companies, it has proved itself to be a very effective strategy that companies around Japan and in the US, and now the world, began to adopt similar strategies to be applied in their own companies

Lean involves a fundamental paradigm shift from conventional "batch and queue" mass production to product-aligned "one-piece flow" pull production

(The File Attached to this article) provides comparison of lean and mass production. It is offered as an overview of some of the key differences in the two production systems. As can be seen in this Table, there are a number of fundamental differences between lean and mass production. Some of these differences appear to be mirror opposites of one another.

 The development of the lean manufacturing strategy marked the shift of the global manufacturing strategy from the traditional approach of exploiting economies of scale and mass production of standardized products towards a strategy for internal efficiency which is focused on producing goods highly suited to meet customer demand with the least production waste. The use of the lean strategy receives and continues to receive relatively good feedback from the business sector. It has been combined with other strategies such as the Total Quality Management and Six Sigma strategies to achieve optimum results.

Initially created for the manufacturing businesses, its application is extended to service-oriented industries and even to improving the efficiency in the office. Viewing every system as a set of procedures which contain wastes, the application of Lean strategy becomes almost limitless.

 Comparison of Mass and Lean Models of Production

Mass Production

Lean Production

High levels of functional specialization Infrequent job rotation Tightly supervised, machine paced production work Many job classifications Problem solving by experts Deskilled workforce Work standards performed and imposed on workers Wages and promotion based on seniority Adversarial labor-management relations Arms-length relations with suppliers, many suppliers, short-term focus lots of sampling to assure the quality, “waste” Production based on forecasting

High levels of functional integration Frequent job rotation Team-based production Few job classifications Kaizen (continuous improvement) by small group problem solving Multiskilled workforce Team members and team leaders actively construct and improve work standards Wages and promotion based on seniority, merit and teamwork Cooperative labor-management relations Tight inter-firm linkage with supplier, few suppliers, long term focus. Quality assured during the process itself. Production based on order.

Adapted from (William M., 2000; Kenney, M. and Richard Florida, 1993; Preiss,