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Lean principles
Problem of lean manufacturing methodology
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Will lean production work in service environments? Why or why not?
The term lean can be described as a waste reduction and improvement methodology. Methods and principles of lean thinking spread over the military, construction and manufacturing industries. Lean methods and principles have been applied successfully across many other industries. Besides, service and transactional industries that use lean include healthcare, insurance, financial services banking, call centers, government, retail, and transportation.
Specifically, lean is a methodology that combined a set of tools and techniques designed to maximize customer value, while reducing waste along the entire value stream. Furthermore, it also focuses on improving overall efficiency, quality, and customer satisfaction.
Lean is already achieving successes in a number of service environments. As services identify their components that resemble an assembly line and are repetitive in nature, the concepts will work.
Lean services are the application of lean manufacturing concept to service operations. Here, the context of services is not limited only to administration or office but it is anything from hospital to a university, from an office process to consultancy and from warehouse to field service maintenance. Usually, in service customer standing in front of us waiting for the service while in manufacturing process constraints are found at machine level where a task time is constrained. In Manufacturing the mother of all waste is overproduction but in services the mother of all waste is over processing.
Lean focuses on reducing waste from actual product, time or money. Lean production can be applied and work in service environment. For example service at pizza restaurant. In restaurant situation, streamlining of food preparation is very important. In other words, they can actually apply 5S in doing pizza preparation. 5S is a Japanese plan for well organised work place, which eliminates the waste of looking and searching of equipment. It consists of 5 steps which is starting with the letter S, hence the name 5S housekeeping. The 5 steps are seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke. Seiri; sort and determine necessary equipment and materials, seiton; straighten, remove unnecessary item, seiso; sweep, clean and routine maintenance, seiketsu; standardised, make a standard and stick to it, use regular audits while shitsuke; self discipline, make 5S part of the everyday life. For instances, streamlining the preparation for ingredients of making pizza and baking process will actually increases the speed of product to customer. Fast and efficient customer ordering and payment would allow the system to process more customers.
“Quality of lean systems is based on kaizen, the Japanese term for “change for the good of all” or continuous improvement” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 737). Continuous improvement involves “every employee at every level” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 737). It is the process of employees identify “quality problems, halt operations when necessary, generate ideas form improvement, analyze processes, perform different functions, and adjust their working routines” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 737). “The idea focuses on improving processes and products while using employee creativity to help define the way procedures and systems can be improved” (Wagner, N., 2015). The kaizen approach encourages an organization to achieve better operational excellence and improve their productivity. The key component to achieve a successful kaizen “is finding the root cause of a problem and eliminating it so the problem does not reoccur” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 738). One of the techniques for achieving the root cause of a problem is asking the “5 Why’s”: “repeatedly asking “why?” until a root cause is identified” (Russell & Taylor, 2013, pg. 738). Kaizen is that big results from many small changes accumulated over time. This does not mean that kaizen means small changes. What is does mean, is that everyone involved is making improvement for a more streamline process. Kaizen is part of the quality of source that involve; visual control,
As you can see, Akron’s use of the Lean Six Sigma has helped with cost savings,
The company that the author has chosen to compare his own organization with is the Toyota motor company. The Toyota Company has become a renowned leader in the area of quality management. Toyota’s theory of “keep it lean” has kept the company running at a level that eclipses the industry standards.
A LEAN Company is our best description and our business philosophy (creating more value for customers with less resources), which pursues to deliver what the customer wants, when they want it, at maximum value with minimum misuse.Through the application of LEAN, we achieve more fulfillment as it helps to reduce the possibility to constantly be fighting a battle against difficulties. Besides, we promote a Continuous Improvement Culture in our performance.
Lean Six Sigma is a methodology that creates processes within an organization to cut waste and improve the company’s performance. However, studies have shown that over the past decade applying Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma can create problems for companies financially and potential problems for employees. Companies should take great care before implementing a Lean Six Sigma solution because in some instances, going lean can do more harm than good both financially for the organization as well as destroying employee loyalty and moral.
According to Christopher and Towill (2001), there are mainly three ways to combine lean and leagile. The first hybrid approach is the Pareto rule, which means that the dominant 20% of products should use leanness and make to stock. While the remaining 80% products with less share of revenue should use agility. The second hybrid approach is about using lean approach for the base level of demand, while for the peak season or flexible demand, manufacturer can use agility
A service firm performance is usually measured in terms of quality. Nevertheless, these performance measurements can also be measured in terms of time, flexibility and cost, and they can also be used by a manufacturing company. In order to analyze the measures, I will divide them to the three main parts of operations, input – process – output:
There is a lot of literature on the concept of continuous improvement (CI). Studies show that CI is very important to creating competitive advantages in highly competitive industries such as the automobile industry (Bhuiyan & Baghel 2005; Li et al. 2009; Schaeffer, Cadavid, & Backström 2010). These studies suggest that manufacturing firms use CI to eliminate waste in all organisational systems and processes (Bhuiyan & Baghel 2005; Li et al. 2009). Currently, manufacturing firms use lean manufacturing, six sigma, lean six sigma, and the Kaizen methods of CI methodologies to reduce wastages, simplify the production line, and improve quality (Swink & Jacobs 2012).
For organizations who have committed to invest and deploy quality systems improvement programs, it is a huge task for every member who is a part of the transformation. The benefits are felt once completed and outweigh the cost from a long-term standpoint. Col. Larsen offers a compelling argument that Lean principles, when properly applied, also result in significant improvement and transcends industry boundaries. Leadership from all levels must challenge traditional approaches, communicate, and execute as a team to design and obtain excellence in governance of safety.
Chase, R. and Apte, U. (2007). A history of research in service operations: What's the big idea?.Journal of Operations Management, 25(2), pp.375--386.
Toyota is a pioneer of the LEAN manufacturing principle. Lean, as a process, is a way to add value to customers while minimizing waste (LEI, 2011). It can also be thought of in terms of flow, which is how Toyota likes to think of it. It is simply a process of decision making where the problems tend to be thought of in terms of flow, reducing starts and stops or unnecessary motion increases flow, reducing waste.
The Lean Startup method is a scientific approach to makes startups fast respondent to customers wants and needs. Throgh Lean startup method entrepereneurs know managing startups effectively in many aspects and also the time to pivot
From this initiative, Toyota managed to widen its competitive edge by employing fewer employees in the car production with a small number of flaw products. The main idea is to fulfill the internal or external customer’s wants. Through lean thinking, it is hoped that nonmanufacturing company’s can provide value to the customers with minimum cost, effort and can save time. Thus, it will lead to improved performance and optimum utilization of the company’s additional capacity and resources. Lean Thinking Category Waste Health Care Examples.
...reduce cost to the business, customers and the environment. Lean production system can be seen really great operations strategy for Kellogg’s, however, the management need to look for methods, which enables the employees to understand the system better, therefore resistance can be avoided. In order employees to be motivated, there is a need for training before their work as well as involve them in the implementation procedure. Consequently, Kellogg’s would be more successful if the company carries out this program.
Service management is refers to the chain management system which established the relationship between the organization and consumer. It is integrated into supply chain management system when the actual sales and customer intersect. The aim of service management system is to provide the best services to the customer through their performance. The high performance of service management can ensure the optimum services to their customer in a complex manner than the typical supply chain. Most of the time, the organization requires larger inventories and strong integration with different system and innovation. They have to be prepared with advanced information and high performance to accommodate inconsistent and uncertain demand. Moreover, Service Management must be coordinated across numerous services with large number of parts and different level of the supply chain.