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Cost, quality, delivery and flexibility are four of the most important attributes for determining the performance of a manufacturing system. Manufacturers like to make the highest quality at the lowest cost and deliver it exactly when the customer wants it. They also desire the flexibility to be able to change quickly with industry trends or changing customer demands.

To achieve better quality, costs would have to rise. Costs could be reduced by automating processes but this reduces flexibility. Delivery can be guaranteed with piles of finished goods inventory but this inventory is an added cost for the company.

2.5 Wastes Identified

Significant changes to this “trade-off” idea occurred in the latter half of the twentieth century. Proponents of lean manufacturing claim that implementing lean simultaneously improves quality, reduces cost, improves on-time delivery, and increases flexibility. This could be accomplished by the constant drive to eliminate waste from manufacturing. Toyota is a very good example of the positive effects of a Lean manufacturing system on these four attributes. Toyota manufactures lower cost, higher quality cars than non lean auto manufactures. They also have the flexibility to produce multiple models on one assembly line. Following the lean guidelines certain waste was identified through brainstorming sessions without the help of the value stream map in the manufacturing cell. The wastes that were focused on can be put into the following priority list.

Unnecessary movement of employees

Overproduction ahead of demand

Unnecessary transport of materials

Production of defective parts

Excess inventories

2.5.1 Unnecessary Movement of Employees

This was seen by management as the largest source of waste in production. It is often observed that operators talking to each other about non-work related topics outside of break times and wasting time by looking for parts or production instructions. Direct labor was a very important factor in the calculation of total product cost, so any time wasted by the operators hit the bottom-line directly.

This waste can be addressed by a number of initiatives. The first of these was to create accurate, easily accessible production instruction for every process in the cell. This is commonly referred to as “standard work” in the lean lexicon. The second was a way to change the material presented to the line to reduce the need to “hunt” for parts. This is reduced by introducing the new kanban system in the later parts of this work.

2.5.2 Overproduction Ahead of Demand

The main tool to address overproduction ahead of demand was to implement a pull system, which is described in detail in another chapter. As part of this initiative to reduce overproduction, all products that was on the production floor that was not needed in the next month was pulled back and products which are in demand are issued to the line本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。