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Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

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  • Independent Researcher

Abstract

If The Machine That Changed the World is a description of the Toyota system in the industry of its origin, Lean Thinking is a generalization of the basic concepts so they can be applied to any company in any industry. The authors begin by summarizing the five inherent principles in any lean system: 1 correctly specify value so you are providing what the customer actually wants, 2 identify the value stream for each product family and remove the wasted steps that don't create value but do create muda (waste), 3 make the remaining value-creating flow continuously to drastically shorten throughput times, 4 allow customer to pull value from your rapid-response value streams as needed (rather than pushing products toward the customer on the basis of forecasts), and 5 never relax until you reach perfection, which is the delivery of pure value instantaneously with zero muda. (The first part of Lean Thinking devotes a chapter to each of these principles.) In the second part, the authors describe in detail how managers in a wide range of companies and industries - small, medium and large, North American, European and Japanese - transformed their business by applying the principles of lean thinking. Chapters are devoted to Pratt and Whitney, Wiremold, Lantech in North America, Porsche in Germany, and Showa Manufacturing in Japan. Lean Thinking has sold more than 300,000 copies in the English language hard-cover version alone, because it's an indispensable companion for every manager making the lean journey.
... In recent decades, lean management has been used in various fields such as industry, service, and Healthcare sectors (Institute 2003;King 2009;Womack and Jones 1997). The lean management approach, along with the traditional management methods through waste elimination, has improved the production system's agility for VUCA environments. ...
... Muda (Waste) is activities where part of the resource capacity is wasted. (Club and Delhi 2018) Muda is divided into the following eight types (King 2009;Womack and Jones 1997;Hines and Rich 1997;Jasti and Sharma 2014): ...
... Lean Thinking is one of the approaches widely used. In addition to Lean manufacturing, the term Lean Thinking was introduced by Womack and Jones to describe the philosophy, tools, and principles [3]. ...
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Lean Thinking and clinical pathways are commonly used concepts to improve healthcare. However, little is known on how to use Lean Thinking for the optimization of pathways or the quantification of both concepts. This study aims to create a framework to analyze pathways with Lean Thinking on a system level, by quantifying the seven wastes, flow and pull. A systematic literature review was performed. Inclusion criteria were the focus of the article on a well-defined group of patients and studied a pathway optimization with Lean Thinking. Data were extracted on measured outcomes, type of intervention and type of researched pathway. Thirty-six articles were included. No articles described the implementation of the Lean Thinking philosophy or studied the development of their people and partners (“4 P” model). Most articles used process optimization tools or problem-solving tools. The majority of the studies focused on process measures. The measures found in the review were used as input for our suggested framework to identify and quantify wastes, flow, and pull in a clinical pathway. The proposed framework can be used to create an overview of the improvement potential of a pathway or to analyze the level of improvement after an enhancement is introduced to a pathway. Further research is needed to study the use of the suggested quantifications.
... The concept of sustainable/responsible production has received sufficient attention in both academic literature and business practice. The research and practice of implementing the lean production concept with TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and 'efficient workplace' systems, 'Just-in-Time', 'Kanban', etc., allow the creation of quality goods and services while reducing the burden on the environment [1]. ...
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The article provides analysis of sustainable consumption concepts in order to identify the existing and emerging patterns of responsible consumption within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. Based on the analysis of scientific publications, patterns of responsible consumption were listed and then were used for an online survey of 600 young active consumers about their understanding of and attitude to responsible consumption. The main driver of responsible consumption is saving, limiting unnecessary spending. Among the forms of responsible consumption, those associated with saving of resources and the limitation of the number of purchased goods also prevail. Consumers are not ready to pay more for responsible consumption-the increase in costs is the main barrier. Consumers are willing to exercise responsible consumption if it helps reduce costs by consuming fewer resources and goods and make purchases at an affordable price.
... al,2007, McDonald 2007) and customer value. The lean concept includes doing the most with the least (Womack and Jones, 2003), to achieve high performance with fewer resources. Productivity and performance terms are often used within education as well as trade circles; they are not adequately defined or explained yet. ...
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The concept of lean manufacturing was developed to maximize resource utilization through the minimization of waste, later lean was formulated in response to the fluctuating and competitive business environment. For the successful implementation of lean principles, the organization has to focus on all aspects. The objective of this study was to increase the space utilization of the warehouse, improve the output and productivity of the plant, and redesign the production line for the sofa manufacturing unit. The methodology used to achieve the desired objective was the implementation of VSM, 5S, Cellular layout, and Kanban system. After the successful implementation, it has been found that the reduction in inventory cost was 40%, the reduction in production cost was 44%, the rise in productivity was 95%, the rise in output was 98% and the utilization of the warehouse was 76%.
Chapter
Recently, environmental sustainability has been tackled several times due to the impending climate change the earth is facing. Numerous techniques have been applied to reverse the direction companies were going into. In this paper, it is explained the importance that Lean Manufacturing tools and Industry 4.0 technologies can have on the sustainable side of a company. The aim of this work is to fill the scientific gap related to studies deepening the combination of these different paradigms, Industry 4.0-Lean-Green, which have been scarcely investigated together and proposing the preliminary results of a quantitative model that helps towards a green transition. Thus, a Systematic Literature Review has been performed to detect which were the key variables of these three fields and then, it was studied what their interaction was. Then through mean of pair wise comparison matrices the first steps of the quantitative models are shown that investigate the relationship amongst the key variables identifies showing also transitivity relationship. This study is giving the opportunity to understand the main variables of Industry 4.0 and Lean manufacturing on which companies have to act in order to have an impact on green variables and their overall environmental sustainability.
Chapter
The scarce presence of studies on the role of Digital Lean on the social dimension of sustainability calls for the need to conduct further studies and research to better understand how the integration of the aspects belonging to the Lean Management and Industry 4.0 fields can cope with the issue raised. Combining the notions arising from a review of the scientific literature on the mentioned topics with those resulting from a business case where a Digital Lean program has been implemented, this article provides an analysis of the main effects regarding the integration between the Lean paradigm and digital technologies from a social perspective, assessed through job satisfaction determinants. The results, mapped in an ad-hoc created reference model which merges the main characteristic dimensions of Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, show that the adoption of digital technologies promotes autonomy and upskilling process of operators, just as much as it improves feedback, thus contributing to greater job satisfaction. Nevertheless, the research underlines that such benefits can be dampened whenever digital wastes, high technology costs and a different sensitivity between management and shopfloor operators occur, leading to a strong discouragement among personnel.
Chapter
Digital transformation poses a challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) production characterized by a low-variant and low-volume manufacturing philosophy. This article aims to examine the role of a digital factory twin and material flow simulation to increase value creation in ETO production. The study follows a structured approach including a literature review, on-site process analysis, and simulations to determine the optimal production process design. The focus of qualitative and quantitative findings is on the control cabinet manufacturing as an important sector in Germany representative for ETO production. The findings comprise a novel definition of the digital factory twin (DFT), implementation of a simulation model and integration of lean manufacturing principles to optimize ETO production of control cabinets. This study makes a valuable contribution to the development of the DFT and illustrates the successful implementation of simulation as well as lean manufacturing principles.
Article
div>Recently, lean manufacturing (LM) practices are being combined with tools and techniques that belong to other areas of knowledge such as risk management (RM). Value stream mapping (VSM) is a well-known tool in showing the value, the value stream, and the flow, which represents the three lean principles. VSM and RM, when used in tandem with one another, are more advantageous in covering VSM issues such as the variability of production processes. In this article, a conceptual model that integrates the two is shown and explained. The model helps to generate scenarios of current state map (CSM) and future state map (FSM) in a dynamic way by identifying current and potential risks. These risks might happen in the future, bringing with it negative ramifications including not reaching the main objectives within the defined time. The model has been tested in a coffee production company belonging to health and food sector. The proposed model specified the ranges of variability through the drawing of CSM and FSM. This is quite a milestone because one of the challenges of VSM is that it is a static tool, and, as such, process variability cannot be captured appropriately. This new model is expected to overcome this drawback.</div
Article
Industrialization is an alternative development model needed by the country to spur economic processes. Apart from accelerating the economy, the development of industrialization also has impacts that need to be watched out for, including the presence of a waste industry. One of the companies that manages the waste, namely PT. AJU is also a service company for the procurement and sale of metal waste (metal scrap) in Karawang. The metal scrap studied is canned metal scrap, which is wasteful in the procurement and sales process. So that efforts are made to minimize the waste that occurs. This research uses the Value Stream Mapping method with VALSAT analysis. Based on the research results, the most common types of waste are waiting (28%), inventory (24%), and movement (20%). Then the mapping tools that will be used based on the results of converting the questionnaire scores into the VALSAT matrix are Process Activity Mapping (33%), Supply Chain Response Matrix (20%), and Demand Amplification Mapping (17%). The Value Added Ratio (VAR) before the repair has a value proportion of 3%, while after the repair analysis the VAR value becomes 9%.
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