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CALL FOR PAPERS TO FILL ISSUE ON LEAN ENTERPRISE TRANSFORMATION
Editors of the Journal of Enterprise Transformation are inviting papers for its special issue (Volume 3, Issue 2) on lean enterprise transformation.
Lean thinking is the process of satisfying customer needs for a good or a service profitably with the least resources possible. Simply put lean is "doing more with less." To accomplish its mission lean systems utilize a number of strategies including demand pull, just-in-time production, load leveling, smaller lot sizes, employee empowerment, standard work, visual process flow, elimination of non-value-adding activities, and continuous improvement. While started in the automotive sector, with the ongoing global pressure of cost cutting and quality focus, lean system design concepts have become widely popular, propagating into every industry sector, including services. As the applications increased over the past two decades lean systems research has been maturing incorporating innovative strategies, modeling tools and techniques.
Hence, the purpose of this special issue is to explore the role of lean on enterprise transformation and tools/techniques that enable their effectiveness. It will share cutting edge research and success stories with the academics and professionals working in the field of lean systems with a balanced exposition of lean theory and practice, and provide scientific validation of previous research in alternate industry domains and on new situations and circumstances.
Suggested topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):
Simulation of enterprise processes to assess the effectiveness of different lean strategies
Application of decision tools and techniques for assessing, analyzing and managing risk in lean enterprises
Development of models to optimize lean enterprise operations
Application of statistical modeling techniques for monitoring and controlling lean enterprise quality
Identification of metrics to improve performance of lean enterprise
Innovations on how and when lean and related strategies such as Six Sigma and green/sustainable enterprise design can be used together to achieve superior systems performance
Comparison of lean enterprise strategies versus other strategies using modeling and empirical analysis
Lean enterprise best practices through innovative analysis of industrial applications of lean
Submission Instructions
All complete papers will be subject to a thorough peer review process. To be considered for this special issue, plese submit papers no longer than 30 double-spaced pages to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ujet. Deadlines are:
Full paper submission deadline: July 1, 2012
Publication decisions: Oct. 1, 2012
Revised paper deadline: Dec. 1, 2012
You can also submit questions or preliminary ideas for papers to the following guest editors:
Ertunga C. Ozelkan, associate professor of systems engineering & engineering management, associate director of Center for Lean Logistics and Engineered Systems, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Ahad Ali, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, director of master of science in industrial engineering, Lawrence Technological University
MD Sarder, assistant professor & program coordinator, Industrial Engineering & Technology, associate director of the Center for Logistics, Trade and Transportation, University of Southern Mississippi
The ASQ Pocket Guide for the Certified Six Sigma Black Belt
T. M. Kubiak
Quality Press, 15-Oct-2013 - Business & Economics - 300 pages
Unlike other pocket guides, this guide is designed specifically to address topics that the author has found to cause problems, issues, and concerns for most Black Belts over the years. As such, its primary purpose is to serve as a useful reference guide for the Black Belt throughout his or her busy day, and particularly in meetings. Though not intended to be a tool guide like other pocket guides or a preparation guide for the ASQ certifications, it will nonetheless serve as a useful reference guide for both the ASQ Black Belt and Master Black Belt certification examinations.
Black belts will enjoy reading this pocket guide and find it invaluable in their daily work.
A production system based on the philosophy of achieving the complete elimination of all waste in pursuit of the most efficient methods.
Toyota Motor Corporation's vehicle production system is a way of making things that is sometimes referred to as a "lean manufacturing system," or a "Just-in-Time (JIT) system," and has come to be well known and studied worldwide.
Industry 4.0 technologies transform lean processes to advance the enterprise.
in more recent years, Industry 4.0 digital and physical technologies have made possible new accomplishments of speed, cohesion, flexibility, and automation that have forever altered what production looks like. Advances in robotics, materials, and artificial intelligence are all poised to be the future vanguards of manufacturing and beyond.2
As a result, digital technologies and lean principles are intersecting in what is commonly termed “digital lean”—which can be a powerful combination of timeless lean principles and constantly evolving digital technologies to decrease waste and variability in processes.
“Go back to what Henry Ford did 100 years ago,” "He got single-piece flow on the assembly line. Now how do you extend that all the way up the supply stream?" That’s the progress of lean manufacturing concept.
A presentation done by Dr. K.V.S.S. Narayana Rao on Lean Management
James Womack and Daniel Jones were involved in the MIT Project that came out with the book "The Machine that Changed the World." They further elaborated their ideas on lean enterprise in the book "Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation."
Essential Background Reading to Understand Lean Thinking
They proposed five lean principles and wrote one chapter on each principle
Five Principles of Lean - Womack and Jones
Chapter No. - Chapter
1. Value
2. Value Stream
3. Flow
4. Pull
5. Perfection
1. Value
To design a lean production system, the product to be produced has to be decide with appropriate methods. Providing the wrong good or service is ineffective to start with itself. Every activity must be effective and efficient. Ineffectiveness is waste.
Lean thinking must start with a conscious attempt to precisely define value in terms of specific products with specific capabilities offered at specific prices. It has to be developed through a dialogue with selected customers based on sampling to reflect the population of potential buyers. Rethinking can cover the entire world, to determine where in the world the opportunity is there to create value.
Identify the Value Stream
The value stream is the set of all the specific actions required to bring a specific product through the three critical tasks of any business: the product development, design & production system design and installation task running from concept through detailed design and engineering to production launch, the information management task running from order-taking through detailed scheduling to delivery, and the physical transformation task proceeding from raw materials to a finished product in the hands of the customer.
Identifying the entire value stream for each product (or product family) is the next step in lean thinking. The value stream has to be graphically presented. The value stream map exposes enormous, amounts of waste. Three types of actions occur along the value stream: (1) Actions that unambiguously create value. (2) Steps that create no value but to be unavoidable with current technologies and production assets: inspections can be placed in this category. Term them type one muda). And (3) some steps that create no value (Type Two muda). This is similar to eliminate step of process chart analysis.
There is lot of waste in the flow of information and flow of material between buying and selling firms in the value stream from raw materials to finished products. Lean thinking must go beyond the firm, the to look at the whole value stream: the entire set of activities entailed in creating and producing a specific product, from concept through detailed design to actual availabilitv. from the initial sale through order entry and production scheduling to delivery, and from raw materials produced far away and out of sight right into the hands of the customer. The organizational mechanism for doing this is termed as the
Peter Hines, Matthias Holweg, Nick Rich, (2004) "Learning to evolve: A review of contemporary lean thinking", International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 24 Iss: 10, pp.994 - 1011 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=849566&
The genealogy of lean production
Matthias Holweg
2007/3/31
Journal of Operations Management, Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 420-437
Lean distribution: concepts, contributions, conflicts
Andreas Reichhart, Matthias Holweg
2007/8/15
International Journal of Production Research, Volume 45, Issue 16, Pages 3699-3722
The lean toolbox: The essential guide to lean transformation
John Bicheno, Matthias Holweg
2009
Publisher: Production and Inventory Control, Systems and Industrial Engineering (PICSIE) Books
The waste elimination and productivity improvement that made Toyota the most productive automobile plant in the world (with production being twice that of US plants per worker and at lower cost and at a higher quality) was made possible by further creative application of industrial engineering and scientific management. Both persons who improved Toyota Motors to world class production level have clearly stated this fact in their books (Taiichi Ohno & Shigeo Shingo).
While Japanese called their system, JIT, MIT researchers gave the name "lean" signifying smaller batch quantities and small work-in-process inventories. All engineers and managers have to recognize the productivity, cost reduction and continuous improvement orientation and practice of industrial engineering.
Articles explaining the relation between industrial engineering and lean manufacturing.
But from a production system design perspective lean now became an alternative system. The earlier basic alternatives were job shop, batch production shop, mass production flow shop, group technology cell or cellular manufacturing cell. The two additional production systems are fixed layout production and continuous flow production. Lean production system having mixed model assembly, supplied through a component supermarket in which replenishment of parts occur based on the consumption during the previous period (may be hour, or day or multiples of day) has emerged as an alternative production system that can be installed right at the starting of the production of new product. This is the natural progression of industrial engineering improvement. Improvements done by industrial engineers are communicated to designers and product designers and process designers capture these improvements in the subsequent designs.
The improvements done using industrial engineering in Toyota Motors are now captured by production system designers and production managers as lean production system or lean manufacturing system.
2018
Lantech Europe has developed thousands of variations of its products to guarantee that customers are always provided with the right machine at the right time
“Today, we follow all the best methods of lean production, such as one-piece flow, just-in-time, and make-to-order. We combine these with a modular machine build-up approach that enables us to apply a smart customisation process. .. This flexibility and modularity means that we can build lots of variations and, I believe, this is where we add real value, because we can offer customised machines and shorten lead times,” http://www.manufacturing-today-europe.com/2018/05/21/lantech-europe/
Ron Hicks - The Man Who Implemented Lean in Lantech - Interview in 2013
Ron Hicks' degree was in industrial engineering in 1972. He then went through the intensive three-year manufacturing management program at General Electric Co. He successfully understood and implemented lean, the new industrial engineering - management paradigm, He recognized that the new system is a better paradigm for an effective and efficient production system. The old paradigms production systems have to be replaced by the new paradigm.
The old American manufacturing model was replaced by a leaner, more automated environment by the Japanese companies for more productivity. Many companies in America were switching to lean system, in which the global competition is the driving force. There are still many in America who do things the same way they always have, because it worked then and it still works now.
Lantech chooses lean approach
The goal of lean thinking is to identify what adds value to the product from a customer's perspective (painting a piece adds value; time spent looking for the right tool does not) and then to analyze current practices and cut out as much waste as possible. The work that has to be done then is designed to flow at a pace to create what the customer needs, when the customer needs it. Before switching to lean manufacturing, Lantech worked under the traditional batch-and-queue process in process layout.
Production scheduling was complicated, involving multiple departments and the entire process required space for huge inventories of material and finished products.
In the lean model a cell has all of the equipment it needs to build a certain type of machine. Lantech builds only to order, and a machine that used to take weeks now is completed in a single day, Problems are found immediately because inspection and verification are done at the site where the machine is built. In the lean system, Lantech has seen "a quantum leap in quality." Now Lantech produces a broader range of product, three times the output, but still empty space in the plant and customers that are satisfied.
Lean Lantech Vision - Jim Lancaster, President, Lantech
Pat Lancaster, Father of Jim Lancaster implemented Lean in Lantech in 1992 with Ron Hicks as VP, Operations
________________
________________
How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection
by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones
From HBR (September–October 1996)
(Important issues covered: Principles of Lean Transformation: Good description. Lean transformation at Lantech. Kaikaku - transformative radical change)
The waste elimination and productivity improvement that made Toyota the most productive automobile plant in the world (with production being twice that of US plants per worker and at lower cost and at a higher quality) was made possible by further creative application of industrial engineering and scientific management. Both persons who improved Toyota Motors to world class production level have clearly stated this fact in their books (Taiichi Ohno & Shigeo Shingo).
While Japanese called their system, JIT, MIT researchers gave the name "lean" signifying smaller batch quantities and small work-in-process inventories. All engineers and managers have to recognize the productivity, cost reduction and continuous improvement orientation and practice of industrial engineering.
Articles explaining the relation between industrial engineering and lean manufacturing.
But from a production system design perspective lean now became an alternative system. The earlier basic alternatives were job shop, batch production shop, mass production flow shop, group technology cell or cellular manufacturing cell. The two additional production systems are fixed layout production and continuous flow production. Lean production system having mixed model assembly, supplied through a component supermarket in which replenishment of parts occur based on the consumption during the previous period (may be hour, or day or multiples of day) has emerged as an alternative production system that can be installed right at the starting of the production of new product. This is the natural progression of industrial engineering improvement. Improvements done by industrial engineers are communicated to designers and product designers and process designers capture these improvements in the subsequent designs.
The improvements done using industrial engineering in Toyota Motors are now captured by production system designers and production managers as lean production system or lean manufacturing system.
The Lean Revolution in Lantech - 1992-2003
Ron Hicks as Vice President of Operations started the lean revolution in Lantech in 1992. Ron Hicks was an industrial engineer.
He learnt lean from the Japanese trainers at Hennessy Industries of Nashville, Tennessee, a manufacturer of automotive repair tools and garage lifts. Ron Hicks was the vice president of operations there. Before that Hicks was at General Electric Company.
During the interview for Lantech, Ron Hicks explained his manufacturing strategy. He would form cells and manufacture one machine at a time. The batch and queue system can be changed and productivity can be improved. Lantech management decided that Ron Hicks was the best choice for their company and hired him. After joining the company, he eliminated the existing process based departments and created four cells for the four varieties of machines. All activities relating to a machine are done in the same cell in a continuous flow. This is the kaikaku (radical transformation) phase as per the plan of Ron Hicks. The existing arrangement was torn apart and a new system was put in place.
To make the system work, standard work procedures were developed and standard times were specified. The quality of the output has to go up at every stage. To form the cells, many machine tools had to be right sized and number of new tools had to be developed so that multiple tools could be used on the same machines in a flexible manner. Quick changeover (SMEDs) were developed.
But in the initial days, number of problems surfaced. Doubts were expressed on the changes created by Ron Hicks. Jose Zabaneh, a production manager put in his contribution as a determined person to go through many problems and resolve them. Pat Lacaster the CEO gave unfaltering support to the new system. The consultant Anand Sharma was there with the necessary technical skills. By the fall of 1992, the whole Lantech production system had been converted from batches to single piece flow. Thus it was a team effort that created the lean manufacturing system at Lantech.
A clear vision or plan or design, technical mastery over the details, and a passionate will to succeed are essential for any lean transition. Sometimes only a single person may be sufficient to provide the leadership and sometimes a team may do the job like at Lantech. But to sustain the lean system, the lean principles and methods must be developed in all people in the organization.
Benefits of lean transformation: The manpower stayed the same at three hundred. But the number of shipments doubled from 1991 to 1995. The plant had 30% extra space in 1995. The number of defects reported by customers fell from 8 per machine in 1991 to 0.8 per machine in 1995. Production throughput time became fourteen hours from the earlier figure of sixteen weeks. On time delivery of machines reached the level of 90 per cent. The wages were increased to $8.5 from the earlier $7.00.
Then the order taking process was also redesigned to be a lean process. A reengineering team has gone through the process. A cost table was prepared that helped the sales to come up with a quotation quickly. Once the order was received, it was inserted into the schedule in two days. MRP was used for long-term materials ordering from suppliers, but day-to-day scheduling was done on the shop floor.
In 1993, the attention was directed to product development. Lantech set up a project team under a Directly Responsible Individual clearly charged with the success of the product during its lifetime. A team of dedicated specialists consisting of marketing, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, manufacturing engineering, purchasing, and production engineers and workmen. They were asked to work nonstop on the project. In the process it was found that many people have a broader range of skills than was thought earlier and could learn some skills that were needed during the project. Also, some advance scheduling could release for other important tasks for sometime in between.
The first product that came out of the new development system, the new S series, was developed in one year, compared to the four years that was the standard earlier. The launch was much smoother than in the past and the number of defects reported by customer was very low compared to the previous models during the initial production periods.
Source:
Lean Thinking
James Womack and Dan Jones, 2003 Edition
The waste elimination and productivity improvement that made Toyota the most productive automobile plant in the world (with production being twice that of US plants per worker and at lower cost and at a higher quality) was made possible by further creative application of industrial engineering and scientific management. Both persons who improved Toyota Motors to world class production level have clearly stated this fact in their books (Taiichi Ohno & Shigeo Shingo).
While Japanese called their system, JIT, MIT researchers gave the name "lean" signifying smaller batch quantities and small work-in-process inventories. All engineers and managers have to recognize the productivity, cost reduction and continuous improvement orientation and practice of industrial engineering.
Articles explaining the relation between industrial engineering and lean manufacturing.
But from a production system design perspective lean now became an alternative system. The earlier basic alternatives were job shop, batch production shop, mass production flow shop, group technology cell or cellular manufacturing cell. The two additional production systems are fixed layout production and continuous flow production. Lean production system having mixed model assembly, supplied through a component supermarket in which replenishment of parts occur based on the consumption during the previous period (may be hour, or day or multiples of day) has emerged as an alternative production system that can be installed right at the starting of the production of new product. This is the natural progression of industrial engineering improvement. Improvements done by industrial engineers are communicated to designers and product designers and process designers capture these improvements in the subsequent designs.
The improvements done using industrial engineering in Toyota Motors are now captured by production system designers and production managers as lean production system or lean manufacturing system.
1991 - The Story Begins
Art Byrne joined Wiremold as CEO in September 1991. He found a classic batch and queue system in production, sales order taking and scheduling process and product development. The cycle time of products was four to six weeks. Order taking process was a week. Product development took two and half to three years from concept to launch.
In this company Art Byrne announced an early retirement package to the aging workforce. Almost all of the eligible hourly workers took the retirement offer, but only small fraction of office staff took the offer. So, he has given to some of the office staff also a forced severance. (Is is right? This is the typical American way, which is in practice even today).
But when the planned manpower reduction has occurred, Byrne called a meeting of the entire workforce and announced to them that there will an improvement exercise in the company but nobody will lose job because of process and productivity improvements. The union did not believe it and went through the promise very carefully. But in the end they concluded that Byrne would honor his word and he has the plan and capability to do it.
But managers were sceptical. Byrne explained to them, while he expects good things to happen, if some expected fall in sales takes place there are tools to manage the downturn. Overtime can be reduced, surplus workforce can be employed in improvement projects, some outsourced components can be manufactured inside, work week can be reduced and new product line can be developed. We are going to make the operators more skilled and management will not be interested to lose highly skilled operators.
Art Byrne led the first training session in the company himself. Byrne implemented lean in his earlier companies. Based on a manual that he developed, he conducted a two day program for 150 people and followed it with a three day improvement exercise to provide opportunity to them to practice what they learnt. He took them around the plant himself and showed them muda (excess resources being used every where). Then he told them that they are going to convert all activities into continuous flow activities that are activated through pull. He promised them the support of top Japanese consultants and trainers.
Soon hundreds of weeklong kaizen activities were started and improvements were made visible. The company was reorganised into six product families. Each team was given its own punch presses, rolling mills and assembly equipment.
A score board was setup which showed productivity of the team expressed as sales per employee, customer service as on time delivery, inventory turns and quality as rework inside and returns from outside.
The expectation per each time is 50 per cent reduction in defects, 20 per cent increase in productivity, 100 per cent ontime delivery, and inventory turns of 20 per year.
To help the teams to improve continuously, the JIT Promotion Office (JPO) was started. The product team leader and the JPO jointly evaluate the value stream(Order, production and delivery process) to determine kaikaku (reengineering a major portion of the process) and kaizen (local operation improvements) activities to be performed. JPO is given the major responsibility to get the projects implemented. The JPO also conducts training sessions and teaches every employee the principles of lean thinking (identifying value to be delivered to the customer, charting the value stream, flow and pull principles and continuous improvement for perfection.). The principles are to be reinforced in the organization periodically to stop people from reverting to the old habits.
The product development process was reengineered next. Order taking process was made lean. Employees were given a share in profits.
Supplier improvement was done converting them into lean suppliers.
Lot of cash was released from the system due to reduction of inventory and was used buy some companies, which were converted into lean companies.
The benefits realized include doubling of sales per employee in five years, throughput time of one or two days, and increase in operating profit of 600%.
Source: Lean Thinking
James Womack and Dan Jones
Simon & Schuster, 2003
The waste elimination and productivity improvement that made Toyota the most productive automobile plant in the world (with production being twice that of US plants per worker and at lower cost and at a higher quality) was made possible by further creative application of industrial engineering and scientific management. Both persons who improved Toyota Motors to world class production level have clearly stated this fact in their books (Taiichi Ohno & Shigeo Shingo).
While Japanese called their system, JIT, MIT researchers gave the name "lean" signifying smaller batch quantities and small work-in-process inventories. All engineers and managers have to recognize the productivity, cost reduction and continuous improvement orientation and practice of industrial engineering.
Articles explaining the relation between industrial engineering and lean manufacturing.
But from a production system design perspective lean now became an alternative system. The earlier basic alternatives were job shop, batch production shop, mass production flow shop, group technology cell or cellular manufacturing cell. The two additional production systems are fixed layout production and continuous flow production. Lean production system having mixed model assembly, supplied through a component supermarket in which replenishment of parts occur based on the consumption during the previous period (may be hour, or day or multiples of day) has emerged as an alternative production system that can be installed right at the starting of the production of new product. This is the natural progression of industrial engineering improvement. Improvements done by industrial engineers are communicated to designers and product designers and process designers capture these improvements in the subsequent designs.
The improvements done using industrial engineering in Toyota Motors are now captured by production system designers and production managers as lean production system or lean manufacturing system.
Pratt & Whitney - 52% Cost Reduction from 2009
_____________
_____________
Production Cost Reduction Strategy
Pratt and Whitney's Bromberg on Reducing F135 Engine Costs for F-35, GatorWorks, Digital Depot
20 Jul 2018
_____________
_____________
2019
Pratt & Whitney - Ten Years of Lean and Cost Management/Productivity Improvement of F135 Engine
Pratt & Whitney practices Product Industrial Engineering and Process Industrial Engineering. Various methods and techniques of industrial engineering are used by the organization to improve productivity, eliminate waste, reduce cost and provide the customer enhanced quality at reduced prices. Quality improvement and cost reduction are two separate activities and planned and engineered cost reduction always preserves quality of a product or process. Both F.W. Taylor and L.D. Miles were emphatic on this principles. Quality and reliability are to preserved and post industrial engineering, there has to be demonstration that quality and reliability are preserved and only waste activities or material consumption is located and eliminated.
Ten years back, Pratt & Whitney, the propulsion unit of United Technologies, delivered its first production version of the F135 engine for the F-35 fighter program.
Over the period, Pratt has managed to reduce the cost of producing the engine by over half in the last ten years. It plans to continue cutting manufacturing costs in the years ahead through tight management of production processes and suppliers. Long-term agreements with suppliers emphasize continuous performance improvements - quality and productivity. It has also focused on cutting the cost of maintaining the engines once they are in service. Pratt believes that it can cut sustainment costs in half the same way it has cut production cost. It incorporates an unprecedented array of sensors and instrumentation in the engine for monitoring performance. The engine’s ability to diagnose problems before they impact performance minimizes downtime and maximizes the life of key components. As a result, F135 is consistently delivering a mission-capable rate of 95% or better, which is unusual for a new engine.
Nearly 500 engines were delivered so far to both domestic and foreign customers. In 2019 it expects to deliver around 150. Managing large number of suppliers is a challenge—but the company has applied digital tracking and lean techniques to every facet of the supply-chain process.
Production inputs are outsourced to suppliers who themselves have unique competency or lower cost structures for specific types of parts and components. Production of Pratt’s geared turbofan is revolutionizing propulsion for commercial jetliners. Over time it will scale up the geared turbofan for larger commercial transports. Pratt is eyeing a diverse array of practices aimed at cutting the cost of ownership for F135. Some of these practices are enabled by the engine’s design, which requires only six simple hand tools to make most repairs. Pratt wants to examine innovative repair practices, further application of digital technology to every facet of life-cycle support, and ways of extending the life of key parts in the engines.
Kimberley Hagerty became lean transformation manager at Pratt & Whitney’s Hot Section Module Center.
Hagerty uses over 1000 machines in four different states to build one customer order for turbine blades and vanes. From a virtual factory standpoint, it is a very significant challenge to get enterprise visibility of working of 1000 machines in real time. Data collection analysis and presentation, all are challenges.
Excellence is one of six Pratt & Whitney’s (P&W) core values. The objective to ensure excellence is represented in all and every product and service its customers receive, P&W applies lean product development principles. It uses continuous improvement techniques in design and manufacturing.
Set-based concurrent engineering is an integral part of P&W’s product development process. http://lean-analytics.org/pratt-whitneys-lean-product-development-journey/
The experiences of Pratt & Whitney was covered in this book.
Worker Leadership: America's Secret Weapon in the Battle for Industrial Competitiveness
Fred Stahl
MIT Press, 20-Sep-2013 - Business & Economics - 245 pages
How to increase both job satisfaction and enterprise productivity—and make American manufacturing competitive again.
How can American manufacturing recapture its former dominance in the globalized industrial economy? In Worker Leadership, Fred Stahl proposes a strategy to boost enterprise productivity and restore America's industrial power. Stahl outlines a revolutionary transformation of industrial culture that offers workers real control of production operations and manufacturing processes (as well as a monetary share of the savings from productivity gains). Stahl develops this new Theory of Worker Productivity into a strategy of Worker Leadership, with concrete, real-world examples.
Combining some of the methods of lean manufacturing made famous by Toyota with genuine worker empowerment unlike anything at Toyota, Worker Leadership creates highly productive jobs loaded with responsibility and authority. Workers, Stahl writes, love these jobs precisely because of the opportunities to be creative and productive. Worker Leadership also offers important benefits for organized labor. It promotes the vitality and growth of labor unions through a shared responsibility with management for growth and profitability.
Stahl's approach was inspired by changes implemented at John Deere factories by a general manager named Dick Kleine. Stahl uses the story of Kleine's transformation of the Deere factories to construct a checklist of essential conditions for Worker Leadership. He also discusses competition with China and South Korea and tells the story of production that GE recently “reshored” from China to the United States. Stahl considers the potential for applying Worker Leadership beyond manufacturing, provides a brief history of manufacturing, and even reveals the dark side of Toyota's system that opens another competitive opportunity for America.
Worker Leadership offers a blueprint for global competitive advantage that should be read by anyone concerned about America's current productivity paralysis.
How to Root Out Waste and Pursue Perfection
James P. WomackDaniel T. Jones
FROM HBR SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1996 ISSUE
https://hbr.org/1996/09/how-to-root-out-waste-and-pursue-perfection
The Lean Transformation in Pratt and Whitney - 1991 - 1995
Mark Coran, UTC Controller got a new assignment on 1 June 1991, to manage the costs of Pratt and Whitney, UTC's largest subsidiary and builder of aircraft engines.
After discussions, it was decided to implement lean principles in physical production first.
Coran announced that every product would be made in continuous flow to the maximum extent possible with a cost reduction target of 35% in constant dollar terms in four years and lead time reduction target of four months. He brought in a lean thinker from UTC Headquarters, Bob D'Amore. Despite initial attempts things did not move as expected. In the mean time George David moved up to become President of Untied Technologies and was introduced to lean thinking by Ary Byrne. He visited Wiremold and saw Shingijutsu consultants working on the shop floor and coming up with improvement suggestions. When Mark Coran reported his status of the project to David, he immediately suggested to him to employ Shingijutsu consultants. But they came to know that GE's Aircraft Engine Group is planning to engage them. But David made an emergency appointment with them and got into a multiyear agreement.
Chihiro Nakao, a Shingijutsu consultant visited the factory in May 1992. In the space of a week, he demonstrated many improvements in the Pratt's Middletown, Connecticut plant. Also, Karl Krapek, an industrial engineering degree holder from Purdue and who also completed General Motors' IE program was deputed as President of Pratt and Whitney.
Krapek tried to implement JIT in General Motors, but got into problems and them moved to Otis Elevator. From there, he moved to Carrier where he was implementing lean with the help of Shingijutsu. He came to Pratt, and grouped the two thousand parts of in a jet engine into seven product categories - rotors and shafts, turbine airfoils, combustors and cases, nacelles, forged compressor airfoils, compressor stator assemblies and general machines parts. Each product category was housed in a plant with the eighth plant being final assembly.
The fall in demand of Pratt at this point in time demanded head count reduction. Lean transformation required the concepts of multiskilling and mutli machine operations, job rotation, and continuous shuffling work groups to accommodate varying volumes of different varieties of engines. After protracted negotiations between the International Association of Machinist, George David and Karl Krapek, and the State of Connecticut, an agreement was reached in the spring of 1993 to reduce manpower to 29,000 from 53,000 in 1991.
The two basic activities of P&W are fabrication of parts from castings or forgings and assembling them into engines.
Turbine Blade Manufacturing Division
In 1991, 1,350 employees used 600 machines to manufacture #1 billion worth of turbine blades and guide vanes. Ed Northern organized the plant in 1993 into flow lines and also made it possible to reconfigure them as needed. With the modification in the next two years, overdue parts fell to zero, inventory was cut in half, manufacturing cost was reduced by 50% in many cases, and labor productivity doubled.
Redesign of a Monument in Turbine Blade Manufacturing Division
Womack and Jones say a monument in lean thinking is any machine which is too big to be moved and whose scale requires operation in a batch mode. In the case of this North Haven turbine blade unit it is a massive $80 million complex of Hauni-Blohm blade grinding centers.
The redesing involved $1.7 million per cell and it reduced throughput time to 175 minutes from the earlier 10 days. The grinding cost per blade was also brought down to 50%.
The Final Assembly Plant
Bob Weiner was the head of final assembly. Yuzuro Ito was asked to help in the quality area as a consultant. The engine was placed on a moving track.
It is interesting to note that Ito developed "Achieving Competitive Excellence" methodology and Pratt & Whityney and other subsidiaries of UTC even today practice it and write about it as their operating philosophy
(Regarding Ito and ACE: https://www.jmrodgers.com/ace-program-achieving-competitive-excellence/
P&W’s improvement process is enabled though the use of an Achieving Competitive Excellence system (ACE) common to all UTC subsidiaries, which was introduced in 2005 and is followed ever since. The three elements of ACE – tools, competency, and culture – provide the basis for delivering value to UTC customers and stakeholders. http://lean-analytics.org/lean-pd-best-practices-pratt-whitney/)
Pratt's lean transformation did turn around the plant from problems.
Operating results improved from losses in 1992 and 93 to profits in 94 and 95.
Source
Lean Thinking
Jim Womack and Dan Jones
Simon and Schuster, 2003
Jean Cunningham accepted my Linkedin connection request on 3 January 2020 and that started my fresh attempt at study of Lean accounting. Jean Cunningham was CFO at Lantech, a company that excelled in lean implementation.
What is Lean Accounting
Jean Cunningham
19 August 2015
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James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones
Lean accounting is doing more with less by employing lean thinking. It involves never ending efforts
to eliminate or reduce waste in design, manufacturing, distribution and customer service processes. It has been rigorously applied to the accounting, control, measurement, and management of business.
Brain Maskell and Bruce Baggaley
Lean accounting is a new method of managing a business that is built upon lean principles and lean
methods. It is a control, measurement, and management method which enables companies to make more money by identifying the potential financial benefits of lean improvement and developing strategies to realize that profit.
Jean E. Cunningham
Lean accounting is the application of lean principles to the accounting and associated functions within the enterprise It provides a stage that enables the accounting team to move from a traditional
system to a new high value role of consulting within other areas of the company.
P. E. Moody
The lean concept is a philosophy where nonvalue-adding activities are being recognized in accounting processes as well as other processes and eliminated in lean manufacturing systems which has three key aspects i.e. visual management, value stream management, and continuous
improvement.
Mike Rother and John Shook
Lean accounting is a simple, direct and accurate way to create financial reports with very few transactions. It is a tool for visualizing flow of material and information across multiple processes,
so that individual process level improvement efforts fit together as a flowing value stream, match the organization’s objectives, and serve the requirements of external customers.
Glenn Marshall
Lean accounting is an integrated value stream management system for accounting, controlling, measuring, and managing a lean enterprise by focusing on value-stream performance to minimize the
consumption of resources, while creating more value for the customer.
Tonya Vinas
Lean accounting is a movement supported by manufacturers and non-manufacturers to completely restructure how accounting is done. This is a byproduct of the lean movement which is a self-ordering, selfexplaining, self-regulating, and self-improving work where what is supposed to
happen does happen, on time, every time, day or night- because of visual solutions.
LEAN ACCOUNTING: A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED ENTERPRISES IN INDIA
A Thesis Submitted for the award of Ph.D. degree
of
Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur
in the Faculty of Commerce By
Understanding lean manufacturing process is easy if the supermarket system of provisioning components for assembly is explained first.
An assembly line is provided with a supermarket of components and whatever components it requires to produce the assemblies based customer orders given to them can be taken from the supermarket. A supermarket that works with one day inventory will have enough inventory to manufacture any product from the variety it assembles up to the maximum quantity specified for a day. Thus the supermarket actually has more days of inventory for all the products summed together. But for any one product it has only a day's inventory. The inventory is decided by the system design.
From the supermarket, as components are removed Kanbans become released for the part or component making department to produce and replenish the consumer parts. The capacity of the component making department is such that it can produce the component and keep it in stock by next day morning or actually by the end of the day so that assembly has full supermarket at its disposal the next day. One can think of a supermarket for materials for the component making department also. Thus a lean process contains supermarkets and production facilities. We can think of supermarkets in the supply chain.
Toyota strongly believes in developing people. It is a common philosophy of all Japanese companies. But Toyota is a great example of exemplary practice of many principles of management both of Japanese origin and American origin
Mike Rother is the author of the book Toyota Kata
Demonstration of Coaching Cycles by Mike Rother
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Talk on Toyota Kata by Mike Rother
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Toyota Kata - Habits for Continuous Learning and Improvements - Hakan Forss
http://vimeo.com/86838547
Toyota Kata Presentation by Keith Dilbert
http://www.usd.edu/business/manufacturing-and-technology-solutions/upload/Toyota-Kata-presentation-from-Keith-Deibert.pdf
Six sigma is a fact-based, data-driven philosophy of improvement that values defect prevention by process improvement. It drives customer satisfaction and bottom-line results by reducing process variation and defects occurring due to variation.
Six sigma has a set of tools qualitative and quantitative that are used by six sigma practitioner to drive process improvement.
Methodology: As a definite sequence of steps, six sigma uses DMAIC sequence.
Metrics: Six sigma level processes produce only 3.4 defects per million pieces of output.
Six Sigma Organization
Black Belts (Program Managers)
Black belts work full time on six sigma projects. According one Six Sigma authors, black belts should equal about 1% of the number of employees in the organization. It is expected that a black belt manages four projects per year for a total of $500,000 to $5,000,000 in contributions to the company's bottom line.
Master black belts have advanced knowledge in statistics and also have knowledge in the technical fields. They provide support to black belts.
Green Belts: A green belt works under the direction of a black belt and he undertakes six sigma projects as a part of his full-time job.
Champion: He is typically a top-level managers who appreciates the benefits of six sigma projects and provides support for the program.
Executive: The support of CEO or his deputies is required for successful implementation of Six sigma in an enterprise.
Process owners: They have to power of making changes in the process as suggested by six sigma teams. They should be provided green belt training at least.
Industrial Engineering Knowledge Revision Plan - One Year Plan
A lean enterprise is a high productivity enterprise. Lean enterprise gives equal emphasis to effectiveness and efficiency.
Effectiveness is providing goods and services that customers value.
Efficiency is producing goods and services that customers value at a cost that gives profit to the organization.
Profit = Value to the customer (Price to the producer) - Cost of production.
A lean enterprise simultaneously focuses on product enhancements that increase value to the customer and product value engineering and production methods efficiency engineering to reduce the cost of production.
Definitions and Explanations by others
What is a Lean Enterprise?
A Lean Enterprise produces more with existing resources by eliminating non-value-added activities. To be competitive in today’s global economy, companies must work to eliminate overproduction caused by traditional scheduling systems and only make what customers want when they want it. Lean establishes a systematic approach to eliminate wastes, create flow, and develop and implement a long-term plan to streamline your operations for success. Begin a Lean Enterprise Transformation by learning to see your business as one integrated set of processes and then systematically eliminating waste across your entire company – from shop floor to front office.
What is a Lean Enterprise?
Taiichi Ohno, the founder of the Toyota Production System, defined it this way: “All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time by removing the non-value-added wastes” (Ohno 1988). This is a simple and efficient explanation of a complex system and culture.
A lean enterprise applies TPS principles to all aspects of its business.
Customer Focus – Only the customer can define the value of our product or service. All else is waste.
Eliminate Waste – Waste is anything that the customer does not need and will not pay for. All employees must be empowered to eliminate waste.
Improve Flow – Small amounts of product or service moving quickly according to customer demand. Customers will pay for time.
Quality “Built-in” to Processes – Make it right, instead of inspecting later
Respect for People – Develop your people and your partners.
Continuous Improvement – No amount of improvement is ever enough.
