Lean Operations Flashcards
What is lean?
- A philosophical way of thinking that advocates for not just cherry-picking a set of tools. It involves the removal of muda (Japanese for waste, associated with muri-overburden and mura-unevenness)
OR
- A method of planning and controlling operations.
OR
- A set of tools that improve operations performance.
Give the two approaches to removing muda (waste).
Kaikaku-Radical improvement
Kaizen-Continuous incremental improvement
What is lean operations?
The process of relentlessly creating value by strategically eliminating waste (muda).
What is the aim of lean operations?
To meet demand instantaneously with perfect quality and no waste.
What are the four elements of lean?
- W-Waste elemination
- B-Behaviour
- C-Customer focus
- S-Synchronisation
Describe muda, muri, and mura.
Muda (Waste)-Activities in a process that are wasteful because they do not add value to the operation or the customer.
Muri (Absurd/Unreasonable/Overburden)-Based on the idea that unreasonable/unnecessary requirements put on a process will result in poor outcome.
Mura (Lack of consistency/Unevenness)-Inconsistency that results in periodic overloading of staff or equipment.
What is the trigger to lean operations?
Customer demand
Distinguish between value adding and non-value adding activities.
Value adding: Any activity that changes or further transforms a product or service into something that the customer is willing to pay for.
Non-Value adding: Any activity that consumes resources without adding any value.
Give the two types of non-value adding activities
- Can be eliminated immediately
2. Due to current state, cannot be eliminated yet
List the seven types of waste.
- Over-production
- Waiting time
- Transport
- Unnecessary Processes
- Unnecessary Inventory
- Unnecessary Motion
- Defective goods
What is gemba/ganba?
It is the process of identifying waste (muda) and kaizen (opportunities for continuous incremental improvement) opportunities. It means to literally visit the place of operations to identify muda and kaikaku/kaizen.
List the 3 ways of eliminating muda through streamlined flow.
- Examine all elements of throughput time
- Visual management
- Use small-scale simple process technology (e.g. smaller machines instead of one large one)
List the 2 ways of eliminating muda through matching supply with demand exactly.
- Pull control
- Kanbans (Signal/Card to control input into process, e.g. in the school clinic waiting room :) )
- Move/Conveyor Kanban: Signals a previous stage that material can be withdrawn from the inventory
- Production Kanban: Signals a production process to start producing a part to be placed in the inventory
- Vendor Kanban: Signals an external supplier to send material to a stage
List the 5 ways of eliminating muda through minimising variability (in the quality of items).
- Level schedules-Heijunka (e.g. 150 every month instead of 450 every 3 months)
- Level delivery schedules (e.g. small amount of all products in one truck instead of one product per truck)
- Adopt mixed modelling where possible
- 5S
Sort (Keep what is needed)
Straighten (Everything is easily accessible)
Shine (Keep tidy)
Standardise (Maintain cleanliness and order)
Sustain (Sustain the standards) - Adopt Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)
-Eliminating variability in operations processes caused by the effect of breakdowns
List the five ways of eliminating muda.
- Through streamlined flow
- Minimising variability
- Matching supply exactly with demand
- Through flexible processes
- Reduce changeover times
- Measure and analyse changeover times
- Separate external (Can be done while waiting for the previous customer, e.g. aircraft maintenance example) from internal activities (Can’t be done while the process is going on, e.g. interviewing a customer while completing a service request for a previous customer)
- Convert internal to external activities
- Practice changeover routines
