In: Operations Management
identity and discuss the main difference of classic and lean?
Lean manufacturing is an enterprise-wide strategy adopted by
Toyota to achieve excellence by creating a culture, value and
high-quality processes. The five major principles of lean
manufacturing include pull, flow, value, perfection and value
stream. The main perspectives addressed by these principles include
customer, business process and waste elimination. Lean
manufacturing is successfully implemented across various service
businesses across the world to cut costs.
In classical manufacturing, products are manufactured based on a
sales forecast and kept for ready purchase. Consider the case of
ready-made shirts as an example of classical manufacturing. This is
a push strategy. In lean manufacturing, production begins after the
demand from the customers. Consider the case of stitching shirts
from a tailor and ordering a food item at a restaurant as examples
of lean.
In classical manufacturing, the system is improved with less or no
regards to waste involved in the process while in lean
manufacturing, the system is improved by improving the processes
and eliminating the waste.
In classical manufacturing, a standardized procedure is followed in
a routine manner by the employees indicating change is rare while
in lean manufacturing, new procedures are introduced to improve the
process on a regular basis indicating change is frequent in
lean.
In classical manufacturing, change is brought by management through
control while in lean manufacturing, every employee is empowered
and takes part in the change process.
In classical manufacturing, people are trained to avoid mistakes
adopting systems thinking to approach the problems. Normally, the
problems are left unsolved in classical manufacturing until the
operations flow in a smooth manner. In this classical approach,
managers fail to view the opportunities available as a result of
the existing problems. Lean manufacturing focuses on developing
processes that are error-free making the people make mistakes
difficult. Root cause analysis is used in lean-to identify the
mistakes and convert the problems to opportunities.