You work has a junior engineer within a local small to medium sized enterprise (SME) manufacturing company. The company with a great portfolio of products has recently been taken over by an entrepreneur with limited knowledge of engineering manufacture. However, its abundantly clear (even to a non-engineer) the manufacturing processes are somewhat archaic.

You have been tasked by your line manager to investigate the methodology of Lean Manufacturing with a directive to gain understanding and knowledge of the principles. You are then to continue your research and to investigate the methodology of Toyota Production System (TPS) and how this fits with more widely adopted generic approaches to lean manufacturing with a directive to gain understanding and knowledge of common principles that are critical to success.

A) Examine the principles of lean manufacturing in relation to how these principles can improve business performance. Ensure you cover:

Common principles

Origins of lean

Define lean and its importance to the customer

Processes that add no value from a customers prospective

b) Lean manufacturing can bring benefits to manufacturing, analyse these benefits of adopting lean manufacturing can bring. Ensure you consider:

Benefits an organisation would consider when adopting a lean philosophy, that considers; productivity, quality, customer satisfaction, delivery performance.

Benefits of a lean organisation to the customer, employees and shareholders.

c) In all new methods there are key challenges, analyse the key challenges that can be encountered when implementing lean manufacturing. Consider:

Cost

Quality

Delivery

Customer satisfaction

Management complexity and cost to serve.

d) Finally, critically evaluate the advantages and disadvantage implementing a lean production system can introduce. Consider:

Challenges of implementation

Change management

Managing expectations

Empowerment

Motivation

Burning platform

Investment and supply chain