Lean Manufacturing Strategy

1980’s: Japanese companies were succeeding not because they carefully made the right set of trade-offs among different priorities in their operations, but because they were capable of surpassing their Western counterparts across several dimensions at once.

New, Competing Theory: Lean
·     Lean production achieves lower cost, higher quality, faster product introductions, and greater flexibility-all at the same time-
·        Lean production can dominate any competitive situation.
·        Lean production combines the advantages of craft and mass production, while avoiding the high cost of the former and the rigidity of the latter: requires fewer inventories, yields fewer defects, and produces an ever-growing variety of products.
·        People should be broadly trained, rather than specialized. Staff is "overhead" and, with a high degree of work force "empowerment," not necessary.
·        No amount of rejects or variance should be accepted (zero defects is the goal).
·        Communication should take place informally and horizontally, among line workers rather than through hierarchies.
·        Equipment should be general purpose and flexible. Production should be organized into "cells," rather than specialized by process stages.
·     Continuous processes, with as little work-in-process inventory as possible, is preferable to batch processes.
·        Inventory, like rejects, is waste.
·        Throughput time is more important than labor or equipment utilization rates.
·      Product development should be organized through cross-functional teams, which pursue activities in parallel rather than sequentially.

Implication:
Manufacturing Strategy should devote less effort to customizing a production system and more effort trying to adopt the principles of the already-proven Lean Production System.


Bye, 
Anil Kumar JR