Question

Describe a tool or technique which can be used to analyse and improve the performance of manufacturing systems e.g. Rank-order clustering, Ishikawa diagrams, value stream mapping etc. and explain its basic principle, how it would be applied, the potential benefits and inhibitors to implementation.         

Answer 1

Tools and Techniques

S.NO.   LEAN TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES DESCRIPTION

1. 5S Workplace organization and management.

2. Visual Management(VM) Visual Control for exceptional management.

3. Andon Warn of pending problems in the system.

4. Kaizen Continuous improvement.

5. Kanban & Pull System Trigger mechanism for flow and pull.

6. Value Stream Mapping(VSM)    Optimizing Value added works.

7. Poka Yoke Mistake Proofing.

8. Heijunka Workflow levelling by volume & variety.

9. One Piece Flow/Just In Time(JIT) Single piece flow as per takt time

10. Takt Time Rate of customer demand.

11. Total Productive Maintenance(TPM)   Preventive, predictive & autonomous.

12. Cellular manufacturing Group of workstations, machines & equipment efficiently arranged with people being central.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM).

“If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters, Excellence is not an exception, It is a prevailing attitude.”

The concept of TPM has been developed in Japan by Nakajima to maximize the overall effectiveness of production equipment. It is a plant improvement methodology, which enables continuous and rapid improvement of the manufacturing process by the regular maintenance of machines preventing its deterioration and malfunctioning. All functions related to process of maintenance, repairs and changes are assigned to the workers operating the machines (Ho, 2002).This frees up the technicians or maintenance team for finding the root causes of breakdowns to prevent similar problems in the future such as: equipment improvement and overhauls, training, etc. In ‘just as in safety’, the target is zero incidences. In TPM the target is zero breakdowns

  It is considered a personal health care insurance of all the manufacturing machine and tools in a lean environment which are required to effectively run in order to produce the apparel as per the customer demand. The cost of regular TPM is very small when it is compared to the cost of a major breakdown. Moreover in lean environment, if the machine breakdown occurs, it causes the line to come to a standstill. TPM including a set of tools to ensure machine availability and reliability in the production process are demonstrated.

Five pillars of Total Productive Maintenance

1.Improvement activities

2.Planned maintenence

3.Autonomous maintenence

4.Education & Training

5.Maintenence Prevention

Aspects of TPM

i. Preventive maintenance. In this type of maintenance, regular checks are made on machines to ascertain their proper functioning. A defined colour-coded maintenance chart or checklist is used for maintaining record, and is attached on the machine and filled at predefined intervals.

ii. Corrective maintenance. This type of TPM quickly repairs equipment after the breakdown occurs, wait until a failure occurs and then remedy the situation as quickly as possible. Machines with easier maintenance are purchased and used in the unit.

iii. Maintenance prevention. It includes designing and installing such right equipment and machines that needs little or no maintenance

iv. Predictive maintenance. Rather than looking at a calendar and assessing what attention the equipment needs, operator should examine ‘the vital signs’ and infer what the equipment is trying to tell.

v. Defective Maintenance. It applies to the types of devices that only need to work when required and do not tell us when they are in the failed state. For example- a fire alarm or smoke detectors. They require a periodic functional check to ascertain that they are still working.

vi. Autonomous maintenance. It acts as a key aspect of TPM as it trains and focuses workers to take care of the equipment and machines with which they work. It has led to a change from “I operate, you fix, to I operate, I fix”. The involvement of production workers in the day to day general maintenance of machines like cleaning, and lubricating not only saves the time of skilled maintenance person but also production workers become more responsible to their machines.

The proper implementation of TPM leads to quick response, zero breakdowns, lower unplanned downtime and zero product defects, which further optimize the manufacturing processes to deliver performance, higher overall equipment effectiveness, and new efficient products and effectively manage safety and environmental issues .

Total Quality Management (TQM).

“Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.”

  TQM is a generic management term used to describe both philosophy about the quality in the organization and also a family of tools and approaches. Total means ‘ the responsibility on quality lies on all’; Quality means ‘deliver the right product at the agreed time, place and price as per the customer needs’; and Management means “communication of organizational values and vision to all employees by the top management to maintain continuous improvement culture”. The simple objective of TQM is “Do the Right things right, the first time, every time” meaning that quality should be built into the production process in such a way that defects are unlikely to occur in the first place – or in so far as they do occur, they will be immediately detected .It focuses on 100% customer satisfaction irrespective of whether the customer is internal or external and zero effects.TQM is a mixture of quality culture, strategy, improvement and tools

Success of TQM depends on following factors

i. Shop floor and monthly meetings.

Daily and monthly meetings are the best option for information sharing, decision making meetings, or idea-generating. Lean culture believes that everyone must work towards the same aim, be open with each other, not have hidden agenda and undertake the work they agree to in the timescale agreed. With this aim, regular meetings are organized. Shop floor meetings take place every morning standing for few minutes, but for pre-production and monthly meetings, an agenda with timings must be circulated .This helps in developing a culture of preparation, before meeting and involving all the people involved. Precaution needs to be taken so that rather than arguing over a topic, main points should be discussed with no phone distractions. Action plan must be chalked out with dates and people allocated to the tasks.

ii. Inline and Source inspections.

The main responsibility for quality inspection lies with the workers themselves and not on separate quality inspectors. All the operators are trained in quality principles and testing procedures. They inspect their own work to ensure that they do not send defective items to their immediate customers (next person who uses or further processes the item or information) (Dilworth, 1992). This provides fastest feedback. Self checks using poka-yoke devices to allow workers to assess the quality of their own work .Because they check every unit produced; operators may be able to recognize what conditions that caused the last unit to be defective. This insight is used to prevent further defects

iii. Quality circles.

“It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success. It's a quality to be proud of. But it's a quality that many people seem to have neglected.”

  It is a philosophy of worker’s direct involvement in solving the problems that affect their work, their work output and their work place. Its main focus is to significantly affect the efficiencies in an organization’s operations by capturing the creative and innovative power that lies within the workforce. This collective effort helps in human resource development by nurturing and bringing out the human potential. A group of workers meet for an hour informally in employee’s home or workplace, each week to discuss their problems and recommend solutions and take corrective actions .Worker’s volunteers to be a member of a circle, receives training and work in a systematic way to solve problems together with the whole team It is a philosophy of worker’s direct involvement in solving the problems that affect their work, their work output and their work place. Its main focus is to significantly affect the efficiencies in an organization’s operations by capturing the creative and innovative power that lies within the workforce. This collective effort helps in human resource development by nurturing and bringing out the human potential. A group of workers meet for an hour informally in employee’s home or workplace, each week to discuss their problems and recommend solutions and take corrective actions .Worker’s volunteers to be a member of a circle, receives training and work in a systematic way to solve problems together with the whole team

iv. Kaizen.

“If you are content with the best you have done, you will never do the best you can do.”

Kaizen means small, continuous improvements with zero investment. It comes from the Japanese words “Kai” meaning school, continuous or change and “Zen” meaning wisdom, improvement which collectively means “approach to work” where workers are committed towards two types of tasks in exchange of security of their job. One is to sincerely perform the job assigned to them, and the second is to make an effort to continuously improve it (Pieterse, 2005). More formally it was developed by Ohno and Shigeo as a practice, implying choice and practices of the techniques the team has agreed to try, until it is mastered and standardized, experimented to find a better way and repeat forever. Kaizen is regarded as a conceptual umbrella consisting of a collection of Japanese practices as shown

Kaizen is considered to be the "building block" of all lean production methods Kaizen requires the continuous questioning of the basic workings of an operation. The continuous identification and solution of 64 problems by involving and empowering the workers creates a culture of ongoing continual improvement with an organization. Two methods by which involvement can be increased are the ‘Kaizen circles’ and ‘Suggestion programs’. In Kaizen circles, 6- 8 workers in a group are formed which generate ideas for solving particular problems. Typically a Kaizen Circle will meet for around one hour per week for 6-8 weeks, and at the end of that period will present some proposals to their managers on how to solve the particular problems. While in Suggestion programs, people are strongly encouraged to make suggestions and rewards are awarded for successfully implementing the suggestions It improves quality, safety, cost structures, environments, and customer service. Each improvement may be small but the cumulative effort is tremendous

v. Value Stream Mapping (VSM).

“Whenever there is a product for a customer, there is a value stream. The challenge lies in seeing it.”

The value of a process is expressed in terms of a specific product (a good or a service, and often both at once) which meets the customer’s needs at a specific price and at a specific time (Womack & Jones, 1996).It is the adaptive form of ‘Material and Information Flow Mapping’ which is a visualization tool to describe the current and ideal (future) state of a unit or process in order to develop or establish the lean System. It is a visual representation of what happens to a product as it physically moves through the production process (Bowes, 2010). Manos stated that “Pictorial representations of VSM are easy ways to learn a language that anyone in the organization can understand—a key element when communicating with process maps”

  VSM brings about a deep understanding and helps convey enough information to understand the pieces, relationships and hidden wastes. It identifies and eliminates the value added and non-value added waste activities in the enterprise by gathering accurate, real-time data related to the product family or value stream”. It visualizes the whole picture of the process in one map.Hence, VSM if used correctly can prove very powerful lean tools, bringing about improvements in quality, delivery and cost of the final product.