Lean manufacturing can help you and your company greatly. But how do you learn lean? Of course, there are plenty of Six Sigma lean black belts and other certificates available online, but do they really make you understand lean? In this post I have some suggestions on how to learn lean. These can befollowed by people with access to an actual shop floor to work on. However, I have also included suggestions for people, e.g. students, that do not have access to a shop floor. In this case, you can do … let’s call it “Home Improvement“. Let’s have a look at some suggested actions for learning how to do lean!
The Impact of Brexit on Supply Chains
On December 31, 2020, the transition period will end and United Kingdom will be out of the European Union. Brexit will be complete. But I fear the mess will be only starting. In this post I want to look at the impact of Brexit on supply chains. It won’t be pretty.
Reducing Fluctuations Downstream
This last post of my series looks at fluctuations that originate downstream from your location. In other words, how to reduce fluctuations originating from your customer. Granted, this often is the most difficult one, as you usually have not so much influence over your customers (unless you have a monopoly). Let’s have a look.
Reducing Fluctuations on Your Shop Floor
Fluctuations can also originate within your area of responsibility. In my previous post, I looked at how to reduce fluctuations coming from upstream. In this post I look at your shop floor. Using the source-make-deliver structure, this post is about reducing fluctuations at “make.”
Reducing Fluctuations Upstream
This post will list a number of tools that can help to reduce fluctuations. They can reduce fluctuations in the material flow, including its inventories and the durations and lead times. Since reducing fluctuations (mura) is an underlying important idea throughout lean manufacturing, a lot of tools can help. And, depending on how you interpret tools, this list is not even complete.
Structure for Reducing Fluctuations
This post looks at how to reduce fluctuations (mura) in manufacturing. It is a continuation of the previous post that looked at why fluctuations are so bad. Be warned, tackling fluctuations is often a tedious task that never ends, but it one of the important fundamentals for lean manufacturing. After all, the more stable a system runs, the more efficient it is. Leveling is one major method to reduce fluctuations that focuses on the production schedule. Line balancing is another one that focuses on the work content.
Why Are Fluctuations So Bad?
Fluctuations are bad for manufacturing. In lean, unevenness is one of the three evils, besides waste and overburden. In this post I will give you an introduction to fluctuations. One option to handle fluctuations is decoupling, but this addresses only the symptoms and not the cure. In my next post I will show you how to actually reduce fluctuations.
How to Roll Out a Lean Transformation
The goal of a lean transformation is to shift the culture of an organization toward lean. In my last post I discussed a lot of prerequisites. In this post I would like to discuss how to actually do it. Be warned, there is no magic bullet. There is no simple trick that just turns lean on. It is a lot of hard work.