Lean Operation -Toyota Case Study
Introduction One of the most important things in a manufacturing company in order to obtain profit is to have a high level of quality and a minimum level of investment. This is the key that every company wanted to find during the years. In order to maintain a high position on the market and a competitive advantage, the implementation of a manufacturing strategy is very important.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The history of lean operations One of the first who found a solution in eliminating waste and developing mass production by saving time and money was Frederic Taylor, who invented the concept of scientific management by determining the optimal work model after various experiments. Henry Ford was the first who implemented this concept in manufacturing the T model in 1920s. His concept about saving time and money was by using two methods. Ford identified that there were two basic ways to build an automobile: one was to keep the automobiles fixed while moving the assembly workers around and the other was to keep the assembly workers stationary while the automobiles where moved around.
However, Ford realized that by moving the workers around the automobiles he was wasting a lot of time. Four steps were issued to the workers. Some ropes were installed in the warehouse in order to move the cars easier, making each worker stationary. The rope was divided into 15 parts, each one lasting one hour. This would allow the cable to move around every hour, by moving workers to the next process of manufacturing. The distribution of the assembly parts to their correspondent processes was done before needed. Three of four workers were aligned to each process (www.beyondlean.com). After the implementation of the rope the total production was minimized from 13 hours to 5 hours per car. After 100 years, the base concept of eliminating waste remained the same, but industrial innovators have constantly focused on improvements by using different manufacturing strategies.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The history of lean operations One of the first who found a solution in eliminating waste and developing mass production by saving time and money was Frederic Taylor, who invented the concept of scientific management by determining the optimal work model after various experiments. Henry Ford was the first who implemented this concept in manufacturing the T model in 1920s. His concept about saving time and money was by using two methods. Ford identified that there were two basic ways to build an automobile: one was to keep the automobiles fixed while moving the assembly workers around and the other was to keep the assembly workers stationary while the automobiles where moved around.
However, Ford realized that by moving the workers around the automobiles he was wasting a lot of time. Four steps were issued to the workers. Some ropes were installed in the warehouse in order to move the cars easier, making each worker stationary. The rope was divided into 15 parts, each one lasting one hour. This would allow the cable to move around every hour, by moving workers to the next process of manufacturing. The distribution of the assembly parts to their correspondent processes was done before needed. Three of four workers were aligned to each process (www.beyondlean.com). After the implementation of the rope the total production was minimized from 13 hours to 5 hours per car. After 100 years, the base concept of eliminating waste remained the same, but industrial innovators have constantly focused on improvements by using different manufacturing strategies.
References: Anon, (2007) , ‘Lean manufacturing system’ [online] available from the site www.beyondlean.com , accessed on [ 17.05.2010] Balakrishan, R Becker, R. (2005) ‘Lean Manufacturing and Toyota Production System’ Loerfice, A Radisic, M. ( 2004) ‘Just-in-time concept’ , Faculty of technical sciences, University of Novi Sad Seeliger, J, (2005) ‘Lean MRO Spear, S. and Bowen, K. (1999) ‘Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System’ , Harvard Business Review, September-October 1999 Spear, S