Just in Time; manufacturing the lean way

With increasing worldwide competition and option to source from far corners of the world manufacturing units today are under constant pressure to outperform the competition and to provide customers with superior service and products. The Darwinian rule of survival of the fittest comes into play and only those companies who successfully reduce costs while maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction survive.

Lean manufacturing is also known by its aliases of Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing and more famously as Toyota Production System (TPS) is a production ideology pioneered by Toyota. It's interesting to learn that TPS was rechristened as Lean manufacturing only in the 90s when Toyota become the largest automobile manufacturer of the world. Toyota started to work on the JIT, at-least the earliest versions of it, in the 1930s. This was around the same time when Toyota was transitioning from textiles to automobiles. Fast Forward to today, Lean manufacturing is the most widely embraced manufacturing ideology in the world today.

Core tenants of the Lean Manufacturing

“Muda”; Waste minimization

“Muri”; Overburden

“Mura”; Uneven workloads

Muda; Japanese term for “futility; uselessness; wastefulness”

Muda or Waste can be surmised as the following 7 types:

1. Transport: Moving products that don’t need moving
2. Inventory: Unoptimised inventory where components of the finished product are not processed in time.
3. Motion: Resources, both human and equipment, moving more than necessary to achieve processing.
4. Waiting: In the queue for the next production step to happen.
5. Overproduction: Demand disconnect leading to production more than the current demand
6. Overprocessing: Unnecessary process steps due to poor design or logic
7. Defects: The efforts related to work/rework due to a direct result of QA/QC activities.

Muri; Japanese word meaning "unreasonableness; impossible; beyond one's power"

This waste comes into effect because of ineffective processes that give rise to rise to non-standardized work. Ineffective processes give rise to confusion and production clashes which have severe effects on the efficiency of the production line and adverse effects on the morale of the workforce.

Mura; Japanese word meaning "unevenness; irregularity; lack of uniformity; nonuniformity; inequality"

Lean manufacturing works best when all processes work in sync with the right “pull” from the right subprocess. This means the production workload is spread out evenly across all processes, as intended, assuring a smooth production line

Incentives to go the lean way

Lean manufacturing is the chosen way to go for the majority of manufacturers today because it has real and clear advantages for the organization

1. Enhanced and effective customer service: Customers get what they want when they want it. Garner higher customer satisfaction and customer retention rates across your sales channels
2. Clear/purposeful management structure: With the maximum emphasis on working with optimized resources efficiency, lean manufacturing gives rise to small yet elite management teams and specialized workforce.
3. Less/waste: This comes as a no brainer, as the entire focus is on eliminating waste as much as possible. This saves you vital financial resources boosting your profitability.
4. Superior Quality Finished Product: Focused optimization of all processes results in products with higher quality

The enterprise software sector too has grown substantially to support Lean Manufacturing. A robust software is one of the cornerstones towards successful execution of the lean manufacturing ideology.

Sage Enterprise Management and Sage 300 ERP are world-class ERP software which helps operate some of the world’s most advanced production lines across the globe. Get in touch with us to know more about how together, we can take your manufacturing process lean.

Evomatiq Business Solutions LLC is one of GCC's leading enterprise software integrators. Our core focus is to provide exceptional service, especially post-sales technical customer service. Our specialty lies in matching business specific business needs to the right software. To know more about us and the services that we can provide for you, please contact us today.