Brief history of lean management & Toyota production System

By Falaye Leke Jonathan; 24 Feb 2014
   

According to Young (2010, p.30), the term lean management was first used by the authors James Womack and Daniel Jones in their books “the machine that changed the world (1991)” and further defined in their book “lean thinking (2003)”. This concept is essentially nothing more than a renaming of the Japanese production system just-in-time (JIT).

Lean management is a means of waste identification (for example, wasted labour, materials of some resources) or in operations (for instance manufacturing, services and administration) so that it can be removed (that is made lean) for greater efficiency, this is a dynamic process of continual change and is not a standardized one-size-fit-all approach but an adaptive means of efficiency improvement (Schniederjans, Schniederjans and Schniederjans, 2010, p.3).

This is an interesting video that explain lean management in connecting with how it can help organisation to achieve competitive advantage   

Lean manufacturing is concern about the speed of the product; it focuses on improving the quality of the product and the stability of all the processes. Equally, lean concept employs the use of some tools which includes, value stream mapping, cellular manufacturing, total productive maintenance, error proofing, visual control and practical problem solving (Gemba academy, 2011).

A typical example of company known for practising lean management is Toyota. Toyota lean management philosophies includes,

Ø  Just-in-time: system of delivering parts to the assembly line in a continuous flow rather than stockpiling large volumes in the plant.

Ø  Continuous improvement: process of analysis and solving problems on a daily basis.

Ø  Personal responsibility: Each worker on production line is given responsibility for each process he carries out.

Ø  Flexible production: several different models can be produced on the same assembly line.

Ø  Design for manufacture: Making the component a car easy to fit together on assembly.

                                                                                                                      (BBC, 2007)

The major advantage of this process in Toyota is that it allows the organisation to get closer to consumers need. It equally aids faster development of new model because Toyota now develops new model in 18month, compared to the traditional three years (BBC, 2007).

This video explains more about Toyota lean production 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KJaEOiHxNw

According to Turkyilmaz, et.al (2013), value steaming mapping is a collection of all the procedures that are required to bring products through the main flow starting with raw materials and ending with customers. The main purpose of value stream mapping is to pinpoint the various categories of waste in the value stream and take steps to try to eliminate them.

Visual management or control as a tool of lean manufacturing is simply a visible pattern of control which employs the use of visual perception and suitable colours to guide standardize and organise the production, aiming to ensure safety of production and improve labour productivity (Hao, Wei and Tian, 2014).

In addition, cellular manufacturing is another tool of lean management. This is an innovative manufacturing strategy derived from a group technology concept. It is an approach that can be used to improve both flexibility and efficiency in contemporary competitive manufacturing environment. Cellular manufacturing involves, cell formation, group layout, group scheduling and resource allocation (Kai, et.al, 2012).

Concept of Lean Management

By Rakib Hossain ;23 Feb 2014;

Nowadays, every companies try to use their material at the best possible way they can, along with not to waste too much. Also, they want production efficient, customer satisfaction. Lean production is a supply management approach where using this it is possible to provide customer value and reducing waste.  According to Jacobs and Chase (2011, pp. 454-455), Lean production is the most compelling operations and supply management approach of the last 50 years. It is focus more on eliminating or reducing waste as much as possible. Eliminating process involve, moves that are not required, worthless processing steps, and overwhelm inventory in the supply chain are targets for development during the learning process.  Apart from that, Lean operations produce works on the demand of the customers; it means they will produce the same quantity of product as much as customers want (Heizer and Render, p.654).  

Due to the market competitors, every business wants to cut their waste so that they can lower the price than their competitors and produce better quality product. That’s why business needs a process where they can achieve both, by a manufacturing process or management system.  As lean manufacturing is a production philosophy and widely used methods to eliminate waste and increase profit. It has some certain process to work on.

Firstly, pull is one of the four principals of lean management. It helps business through produce the same level according to the customers’ demands, not to producing as much manufacturer wants. This minimize over production. Therefore, business does not have to stock more inventories, where less capital will require because business has to buy less (fourprincipals, 2012).

Secondly, One piece flow; focus on one single piece that minimize process interruption, lead and waiting time, top of that, it increase quality and flexibility.

Thirdly, Takt; known as the hardest part of lean management because it shows that how fast a manufacturer can produce a product to meet the customers demand. It also focus on, to make balance on the work content and achieve a continue flow, respond flexible to change in the market place.

Lastly, zero defects; as mistakes happen, however, lean company do not pass on defects. Mistakes from previous steps must be fixed before move on to the next steps.

                                          Lean Concept- adapted from : 1000ventures.com

Apply to Jaguar: 

There are many companies who adapt lean management, as their production philosophy. Jaguar is one of them. The way they work, the first step called, the change process; where they the term ‘ tell and do’ which means instruction used to come from the top on the organization hierarchy.  Now Jaguar makes the implementation to forming some small groups and selecting a team leader to get the feedback from the team and work accordingly.

Matching supply and demand (JIT); as we had a discussion above. One of the main concepts of a lean production is producing according to customers demand. Jaguar follows the trends (Times 100, 2014). Taking an example of production time, when they require any production materials they get quick response from the center.

Visible management/factory: to meet the performance requirements this process get involve to everyone. By all means, employees can get the knowledge of how individual parts of the plant perform.  

Ownership of work; in this process jaguar gives individual responsibility for a certain task. Here, employee is responsible for their work. The reason of doing this, because they can get to know what are their responsibilities and can maintain their quality standard.