Lean consultant, Lean Management, Lean tools 
Published: 2020-08-03 20:22:51

What is the objective of a manufacturing company?

I’ve given this subject a lot of thought, and I have derived a somewhat complicated, yet elegant hypothesis. A manufacturing company wants to make something that it can sell to someone for more money than it cost the company to make it. That being said, how do you go about achieving that objective? What do you need in order to start?

1. A product

2. A place to make the product

3. People to do the work

4. Materials to make the product

5. Machines and tools for your people to use Since we are talking about lean manufacturing,

I will accept as a given that there is a product. That leaves us with a place, people, materials, and machines and tools. Seems pretty easy so far. What have we forgotten? Ah, yes, one very important item: a customer who is willing to buy your product.

This very important component is at the heart of the lean manufacturing message. When I talk to various executives about their primary performance drivers, I am invariably told that customer satisfaction is the number one indicator. Then the conversation usually turns interesting

Lean manufacturing is also known as Toyota production system. which was introduced by Toyota company. In lean manufacturing the main focus is to have faster better and cheaper production.

The next not-so-silly question is: What are you trying to do?

The obvious answer is, make some money. Since we are talking about lean manufacturing and not lean market research, the next questions are:

❒ How do you make a profit?

❒ How do you control your costs?

❒ What are your costs?

❒ How do you provide faster lead time to the customer if needed?

Assuming that you are using the same equipment as your competitors and equally skilled people, how do you take work away from them and grow your company?

Let’s talk about profit in a manufacturing firm. You have a great product that everyone wants to buy. All you have to do is buy some material, rent a factory, hire and train some employees, start making your product and selling it to customers, and start accumulating some profit.

In order to make a profit, you need to establish a couple of things:

1. What is your cost?

2. What is your selling price? Your profit (or loss) will be the difference between your cost and your selling price. That being said, where do you begin—with the horse or with the carriage?

Let’s start with the horse—that is, cost. You would think that as your cost goes, so goes your selling price. However, this is not really the case.

Unless you have no competition, your selling price is actually set by the marketplace. If you care to test this hypothesis, identify a competitor who produces the same product as you, with comparable quality and lead times, and raise your price to twice that competitor’s.

Then track market share. You should have plenty of time to do this, since you will probably be sitting at home, in your boxer shorts, drawing unemployment. You’ll have lots of free time. So the operative relationship here is really, as your cost goes, so goes your profit.

7 type of waste identified.

In Lean management following are the waste

Inventory
Over Production
Over Processing
Downtime
Motion
Defects
Un utilized resources.

This 7 waste are actually increasing cost and its creating bottleneck in the process. Before selecting any lean tools organisation need t ensure that the selection of lean projects are appropriate. Top class lean consultant always keep their focus on the customer need .

TAKT Time is the speed with which the product needs to be created to satisfy the needs of the customer. Lean help you to reach this takt time and help you meet customer demand

First step could be identification of the bottle neck of the process. Lean consultant will prepare a Process Mapping sheet. This hep to identify the bottleneck process.

Intention of lean manufacturing project Execution is to implement problem solving method that help you to have increase production at better price. Organisation need to identified non value added activity and try to eliminate or reduce it.

There are more than 32 lean tools that organisation can implement. Each lean tool is designed to have better optimized used of resource .

out of 32 the most popular tool used in lean six sigma project, are as given below. This tools are actually process improvement tool

Cellular manufacturing - Cellular manufacturing is a manufacturing process that produces families of parts within a single line or cell of machines operated by machinists who work only within the line or cell. A cell is a small scale, clearly-defined production unit within a larger factory.
Bottleneck analysis - A bottleneck analysis is a detailed process where a company gathers as much information about the manufacturing flow of a particular product or process.
Value stream Mapping -  value stream map is a visual tool that displays all critical steps in a specific process and quantifies easily the time and volume taken at each stage. Value stream maps show the flow of both materials and information as they progress through the process
standardize work - focuses on finding best practices for an organisation or process. Documenting these process or procedure, communicating with team will help you t have better management practice. this will also help you to have better quality control and consistency in product.
PDCA - Plan do Check act is another lean tool provides frame work for Problem solving and Efficiency improvement and make organisation a better lean enterprise

Implementing lean is easy and hard. Disciple is key for lean implementation. Top management need to be Rigid for the result and flexible for the ways and means. A committed Top management can generate better result in lean projects.

Nirav Trivedi

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