1. The goal of lean is to add value to the flow process of manufacturing. This is by adding value to the services and products created, through a continuous process. Ideally, the focus of this process is to eliminate non-value processes like downtime, inspection, re-work, and waiting.
Therefore, lean manufacturing uses lean tools to reduce activities, conditions, and behaviors that create waste in a production process. Through these lean tools, manufacturing can gain the advantage of short lead-time, less cost of storage, and less handling.
2. Lean tools and techniques increase quality management, by cutting back the cost of production, increasing the speed of assembly, improving quality of products, and thereby making a company to remain competitive.
Moreover, lean thinking allows managers to enhance company performance, save on money, and reduce wastage of time and resources. Since, lean thinking focuses on reduction of all forms of waste in an organization, effective quality management that focuses on lean techniques are able to set goals to reduce waste.
3. The kaizen concept is the building of quality services and goods and the satisfaction of consumer needs. Towards this, the concept encourages employees to be involved in the “development and implementation of improvements to systems” that affect them (Summers 358).
The concept is involved with the continuous effort to improve services and products, and reduce waste, thereby supporting quality management. This is through flow kaizen, which deals with the improvement of value stream, or process kaizen that focuses on elimination of waste.
4. “Value stream process mapping” focuses on what is vital to the consumer, makes the production process clear, identifies sources of waste, and eliminates the non-value added activities.
Through this process map, the manufacturer can identify the value desired by client, link the desire with the appropriate process value stream, and resources through a walk-through. The purpose of the process map is to understand the information and material flow.
5. Kanban cards are identifiers found in an inventory system either in a computerized system or in a traditional filing system. The cards follow a product through the various stages of production, and include information like; name, number, instructions, date of creation, due date, and pertinent information, thereby keeping track of inventory.
6. Predictive and preventive maintenance provides production with effective and reliable equipment, through value added activities. Value added activities reduce equipment time, by reducing setup losses, idling, equipment disasters, breakdowns, unscheduled machine downtime, and unplanned downtime.
This is because, these maintenance techniques identify that equipment failure is another source of waste in a production process.
7. The production of goods in smaller batch sizes leads to short lead-times. Short-lead times occur between the production of raw materials and the moment the consumer receives the finished goods (Summers 371).
Consequently, short lead-times lead to increased number of inventory and continuous flow in production for each item. Smaller batch sizes also imply that pull systems or Kanban work well, by easily revealing problems in production.
8. Takt time refers to “how often a single part should be produced, and provides the starting point for the line balancing” (Summers 372). Takt time is “available working time per day” over “costumer demand rate per day” (Summers 373).
This is a measure employed in the synchronization of the pace of production to the consumers’ demands. For companies to get the most effective balance line of production, they ensure that no production time is running faster than takt time.
Works Cited
Summers, C. Donna. Quality Management. 2nd ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.