This book is divided into three parts. Part I is an overview of three concepts fundamental to lean production philosophy and practice: continuous improvement, elimination of waste, and focus on
the customer. Survival and competitiveness in manufacturing mandate continuous improvement of
products and processes—forever striving to be better, faster, cheaper, and more agile. Attempts to improve a process imply the process contains waste, so part of continuous improvement is identifying waste and eliminating it. This part of the book begins with an overview of the strategic importance of improvement in competitive environments, kinds of improvement, sources of waste, and the basic lean principles for waste reduction and process improvement in manufacturing.
In the pursuit of competitive advantage, a company must target its improvement efforts, and that is where the concept of quality comes in. In the notion of customer-focused quality, customer-defined quality requirements are used to set priorities for all improvement and waste-reduction efforts. This concept and the related topics of total quality management, statistical process control, and Six
Sigma quality are also covered in Part I.
Part II covers the main elements of lean production. In a typical company, waste exists in the form of product defects, inventory, overproduced items, idle workers and machines, and unnecessary motion. Through lean production practices in the factory it is relatively easy to identify the sources of these wastes and eliminate them. This part of the book presents the core practices of lean production, namely, producing in small batch sizes; reducing process and equipment setup times; maintaining and
improving equipment; using the pull system (Kanban) for production control; organizing facilities
into focused factories and workcells; standardizing operations on the shop floor; and eliminating manufacturing defects, the notion of pokayoke or mistake-proofing. The tools and methodologies of lean production are largely interrelated, and the successful implementation of one is usually predicated on substantial implementation of many of the others. In every case, the methodologies are aimed at institutionalizing the process of continuous improvement. In every case also, frontline workers play a central role. This role and real-life implementation issues about lean production are also addressed in this part of the book.
Part III reconsiders the lean production concepts from earlier chapters but in the context of a working manufacturing system. Assuming the elements of lean production are well along into implementation, the question then is, “How is production planned and scheduled to take the fullest advantage of these changes?” This part of the book takes a step back to look at lean and pull production methods as elements of a total production system, a system that forecasts demand, accumulates orders, translates forecasts and orders into plans and schedules, authorizes material procurement, and executes work tasks to ultimately yield a finished product. Particular topics of this part of the book include the concepts of
production leveling to smooth fluctuations in production plans and schedules, balancing capacity
and synchronizing of operations, and a framework of overall planning and control to tie together many of the topics from elsewhere in the book. Part III also addresses the relative roles of centralized systems and decentralized (shop floor) systems in lean production planning and control, and the subject of adapting MRP systems to pull production.
The quality, cost, and delivery performance of every manufacturer depends in large part on the performance of its suppliers. Without good relationships—agreements between a customer and its suppliers about the quality, cost, delivery, and service expected on materials received, a company will be hard pressed to achieve lean production ideals. The last chapter of the book deals with the concept of
supply chain management, the changing role of the purchasing function, and application of lean
concepts to improve performance and reduce waste throughout the supply chain.
Originated and developed in manufacturing, the philosophy and tools of lean production have since been widely adopted in all kinds of organizations to improve processes and eliminate waste. To illustrate lean production practices as applied to a wide variety of service and manufacturing situations, many examples will be given throughout the book.
Notes
1. D. Kearns, and D. Nadler, Prophets in the Dark: How Xerox Reinvented Itself and Beat Back the Japanese (New York: HarperBusiness, 1992).
2. A. Roth, A. DeMeyer, and A. Amano, 1989. International manufacturing strategies: A competitive analysis, in Managing International Manufacturing, ed. K. Fellows, 187–211. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.
3. National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, Competing in World-Class Manufacturing (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1990), 118.
4. A related philosophy is time-based competition (TBC), which, obviously, puts more emphasis on the time criterion. Much of the practice of TBC overlaps with TQM and JIT practices, although an express goal of TBC, one which is not necessarily a goal of JIT or TQM, is to shorten product development times, that is to improve “agility” in terms of product redesign and innovation. See P. Smith and D. Reinertsen, Developing Products in Half the Time (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991); and J. Blackburn, Time-Based Competition (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1991).
5. R. Schonberger, World Class Manufacturing: The Lessons of Simplicity Applied (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 137.
6. J. Dalgaard and S. M. Dahlgaard-Park, Lean production, six sigma quality, TQM and company culture, The TQM Magazine 18, no. 3 (2006): 263–281.
7. The analogy has been used before. See H. Mather, Competitive Manufacturing (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998), 12–20; W. Sandras, Just-in-Time: Making It Happen (Essex Junction, VT: Oliver Wight, 1992), 7–8.
8. Material in this section is derived from two principal sources: J. Womack, D. Jones, and R. Roos, The Machine That Changed the World (New York: Rawson, 1990); and D. Halberstam, The Reckoning (New York: Avon Books, 1986).
9. See W. Lazonic, Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1990).
10. Ford’s innovative contribution to the interchangeable part was in its application and execution: he imposed on all suppliers of each part a single standard to which they were all expected to conform.
11. DuPont and Carnegie Steel also developed new forms of organization. DuPont was the first to establish corporate divisions, and Carnegie the first to vertically integrate an industry—raw materials to finished product. The point: It was U.S. companies that were making the innovations. Nothing like it was happening in Europe.
12. The family name Toyoda means “rice field” in Japanese; the word Toyota, which they chose to call the corporation, has no meaning.
13. Womack et al., The Machine That Changed the World, 53.
14. This section is derived from Halberstam, The Reckoning.
15. See J. Byrne, The Whiz Kids (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1993).
16. G. Rifkin, Digital blue jeans pour data and legs into customized fit, New York Times (Nov. 8, 1994): A1.