Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Lean Beyond Flow - Industrial Engineering

 

Lean theory is distilled from Toyota Production System by a team of MIT researchers.

Lean was coined by a researcher to characterise inventory in TPS as lean in contract the traditional inventory maintained in US automotive companies was termed bulk.

Toyota started utilizing lean inventories and made gains in productivity  surpassing the labor productivity of US companies.

The MIT team came out with five principles to explain Lean system to be used by companies now to implement the best practice of Toyota.

The five principles are value, stream, flow, pull and perfection. All these five principles are related to flow. They actually identify inventories in the production system and try to reduce them. As inventories are reduced flow increases. 


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You can see the focus on flow in lean theory from this explanation by Kettering.

Understanding the Principle of Flow in Lean Manufacturing


Understand value from the customer perspective

Understand the Value Stream

Make the Value Stream Flow

Create Pull

Continuously Improve


Identifying the Seven Flows of Manufacturing

Mike Wroblewski, Senior Operations Consultant for Gemba Consulting, explains in his Reliable Plant blog, the Seven Flows of Manufacturing by his Japanese sensei, Nakao-san:


The flow of raw material

The flow of work-in-process

The flow of finished goods

The flow of operators

The flow of machines

The flow of information

The flow of engineering


Barriers to Flow

If you want to improve flow, first remove all barriers. Figliolino Venanzio, Founder of Lean Six Sigma University, outlines both physical and intangible barriers to flow:


Examples of Physical Barriers to Flow:


Distance: Rather than transporting individual items, they are collected and shipped as a group

Long Setup Times: When changing over tooling takes a long time, larger batches are run

Batch-Oriented Machines: Some machines are designed to be most efficient with large runs.

Poor Maintenance: Machines that break down frequently disrupt flow.

Examples of Intangible Barriers to Flow:


Unreliable Deliveries: When there is no trust that parts will arrive on time, extras are kept on hand

Unreliable Quality: If people think that many parts will be unsuitable or will require rework, extras will be kept on hand

Approval Processes: The approver is seldom standing by, so work is piled up until the next opportunity to get the go-ahead

Lack of Faith: Some people just don’t believe flow is possible, so don’t even try

Resistance to Change: Some people think flow might work, but like things to stay the same.

https://online.kettering.edu/news/understanding-principle-flow-lean-manufacturing

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Industrial engineering is a discipline formally started as an academic branch in engineering in 1908. Its foundation is cost reduction of engineering products and products produced by machinery developed by engineers through productivity improvement. Initially the focus was on increasing speed of machines and understanding the maximum speed at which a human  operator can work under various weights of load. The premise was that both managers and operators do not know the maximum speed at which work can be done and quality output produced. Also the speed should not damage machines and harm operators. Operators have to be comfortable working at the recommended speed of motions for hand and feet. 


Beyond Lean: Advanced Principles of Productivity [Hypertherm with Kevin Duggan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4AuprJ041M

https://www.youtube.com/@InstituteOpex

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