Lean Manufacturing: My Experience (Chandrashekar Thimmappa)

- Lean Manufacturing a.k.a Toyota Production system has 5 building blocks as

coined by the author James. P. Womack in his book “Lean Thinking” and they
are as follows:
1) Value as defined by Customer.
2) Value Stream Mapping.
3) Continuous Flow.
4) Pull.
5) Perfection.
Even though there are number of books written on these building blocks. Once, I feel,
that gives you practical exposure, to these individual segments as far as
implementation is concerned are the one published by “Lean Enterprise Institute”
that goes as follows:
1) ‘Gemba Kaizen’ by Mazaki Imai.
2) ‘Learning to See How’ by John Shook.
3) ‘Creating Continuous Flow’ by Rick Harris.
4) ‘Creating Level Pull’ by Art Smalley
5) Perfection as it states is to do above 4 steps repeatedly until you achieve 100%
results.
I personally feel. Everything in this world begins with asking Right Questions, which
paves the way for right thinking, ultimately leading to right solution. Same is true for
Lean Practitioners like me. Hence, I will try to summarise the Lean Manufacturing
Implementation with 9 Fundamental Question & Answers that goes as follows!
1) Which Products should your company hold in Finished goods inventory and
Which products should instead be produced upon receipt of confirmed
customer order?
A) Apply Pareto Principal and figure out which products constitutes 80% of
your demand. Use replenishment pull system for managing those parts.
Remaining parts can be handled by sequential pull system.
2) How much of each product should company hold in finished goods to protect
both the customer and facility from disruption?
A) Calculate Cycle Stock, Buffer Stock and Safety Stock for each replenishment
pull system items.
3) How should your company organise its finished goods area to make
management of Inventory easy?
 A) Use Simple cost-effective Excel templates to do this job and keep your self
away from costly ERP system.
4) Where will you schedule the value stream? What is your pacemaker process?
A) Its usually at the process at the end of the Down Stream if System is stable,
change over times are limited and Orders are consistent. Or else its at the
process anywhere closer to upstream.
5) How will you level production at pacemaker process?
A) Production levelling is affected by 3 major factors,
- First: Work Content difference between products.
- Second: Change over requirements between part numbers.
- Third: Production Pitch Interval (Pitch= No of parts in a container X Takt
time)

6) How will you convey demand to pace maker to create pull?

A) Use simple visual tools like Production Instruction Kanban Cards and Part
Withdrawal Kanban Cards to do this job.
7) How will you manage information and material flow upstream from the
pacemaker process?
A) Build Conveyance routes, Plan for Every Part (PFEP) and simple visual tools
to get the job done.
8) How will you size your centralised market and trigger Withdrawal pull?
A) Calculate inventory as you did for Ware house area and use Inter Process
Kan Ban for Withdrawal of Material form centralised market.
9) How will you control batch process upstream from the market?
A) Batch process like Moulding and Press Shops are controlled using Signal
Kanban’s. Preparing signal Kanban includes 4 steps.
- First: Determine available change over time.
- Second: Set the number of change overs/day.
-Third: Determine Production Lot sizes.
- Fourth: Specify a trigger point for reorder.

Apart from 5 Fundamental Building blocks, Lean Manufacturing involves lots of other
process optimisation tools which come in handy while focusing on specific areas
within the shop floor. Few of them are: Standardised Work, SMED, A3, 5S, Kaizen,
Kaikaku, Hoshin Kanri, QCPC, Quality Function Deployment, Single piece flow, Visual
Control, PDCA, JIT, JIDOKA, Cultural Enabler and so on…….
- For more information on Lean Manufacturing pls apply for Shingo Prize For
your institute and refer to content in the following website:
- https://shingo.org/