Lean in Your Company

Recalls

After the aforementioned recalls Toyota has learned a lesson. The principle of self-reflection - and identified problems stop, reflect and improve - should be extended to the consumer. Now, therefore, be the possibilities of rapid feedback improved. It's like the famous Andon system, where operators can stop the business simply not as technical approach as an operator. Emotions, aangeslingerd by the media, play an important role. As an employee of Toyota never do - jump to conclusions - that media do just that. Perhaps that is still the most important lesson for the automaker.

State-of-the-art

Lean Manufacturing is nothing more than a collective name for logistics principles to timely, and at the lowest possible cost, adapted to new market conditions.

Lean logistics is a science, just like physics good products and services. The way you can best do is evolving, and will thereby be continuously , as a whole can not be falsified. Until recently there was the description of the state-of-the-art focuses mainly on the technical side, but right now the focus shifts to the organizational side, as I later in this article will show.

Ford

How far Henry Ford thought carried through so the flow is clear from the construction of a plant with multiple floors. It was the intention that the materials through holes in the floor from floor to floor would flow, eventually ending up in the final product. This factory was also there, but it was never produced.

Toyota

The development of the now famous. The main contribution from Toyota that it was Ford's flowing production adapted for the production of multiple product variants. It was used all the logistical knowledge of that time, including the Training Within Industry (TWI) program. This turned during WWII in American factories, to train new professionals TPS began around 1950. as soon as a replacement for the departed soldiers. TWI introduced for the first scientific approach to process improvement, we now know as PDCA or Plan-Do-Check-Act.

Of course there are many more cases used in the development of the TPS, including the taktzeit. It was introduced in the thirties in the German aircraft industry, in order to indicate in which the rhythm of the aircraft were to be passed between processing stations.

Lean manufacturing is not typical 'Toyotaans' or Japanese, and over a century will continue the best practices are evaluated. Also another company will undoubtedly be called as a shining example!

Reducing wastage

Not only Lean itself is constantly changing, so are the insights about what exactly the core thereof. After the U.S. scientists James Womack and Daniel Jones had studied the TPS, they introduced in the eighties,