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Repetitive
and flexible - Sounds to good to be
true?
"It would never work with our level of forecasting
accuracy"
"We are at the mercy of our customers,they say jump and our
sales guys say how high?!"
"If only our suppliers could be relied on to be more
flexible"
"It couldn't apply in our type of industry"
Don't let thoughts like these stop
you finding out how you can improve your company's responsiveness
to market demands while also increasing margin and profits by
implementing Lean Thinking principles, tools and
techniques.
To appreciate
why LEAN is more than just reducing waste in the factory, one needs
to understand the Toyota World Class model, the origin of Lean
Thinking principles, as shown on the right.
The foundation of the system is levelled production, or heijunka. Waste elimination
is certainly part of the model however it is important to first
build the foundation.
Definition of levelled production can be found in many articles and
books on Lean, where it is usually described as single piece flow
matched to market pull i.e. perfect material flow with zero
lead-time. To many companies this is a theoretical nicety yet a
practical impossibility with their products, plant and equipment.
The idea of levelled production is therefore dismissed as being
impractical and the thrust of LEAN in the organisation just becomes
waste reduction in the factory.
However this description of heijunka. represents the final step in a
progressive evolutionary process of achieving levelled production,
but it certainly isn't where Toyota started. What is generally
not shown are the
steps Toyota followed to get to this final stage. Understanding and
implementing the first steps in heijunka can help all
manufacturing companies implement true Lean Thinking and reap the
benefits this brings in greatly increased margins and greater responsiveness to
changing market demands.
You maybe thinking "how come
you know about the steps involved in progressively implementing
heijunka when others don't?"
A reasonable thought and here's the answer:
Twenty five years ago, having graduated as a
biochemist/microbiologist and responsible for a plant producing
enzymes from deep-culture fermentation of bacteria, a highly
technical biological and chemical processing operation, we
developed a way of working we called Repetitive Flexible
Supply, because it achieved seemingly conflicting objectives of
meeting customer orders that were short lead-time and unpredictable
for products that had very long lead-times while still keeping
stocks low and efficencies high. Seemingly conflicting objectives
achieved simultaneously
- which is what Repetitive and Flexible Supply
delivered. |
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Sometime later on a factory study tour to Japan, I met Yoshiki
Iwata who had been a key player in the development of the Toyota
Production System. When explaining Repetitive Flexible
Supply to him he laughed and said it was the same as first
steps of heijunka. He
said it was the first time he had heard a Westener describe the
true foundation of Lean as most were only looking at where Toyota
where now, not where they had started with implementing levelled
production many years before. He gave an explanation of the steps
involved and how these formed the crucial foundation of LEAN as
well as providing direction for the application of lean tools plus
how following these steps actually resulted in eliminating muda i.e. waste reduction was a
consequence of implementing the progressive steps of
heijunka.
This explanation helped us to develop a step by step methodology
for implementing levelled production in industries where it
currently may seem impossible, particularly the process industries
such as chemicals, food, drink, pharmaceuticals, toiletries,
paints, etc.
However, a word of warning. The first steps of heijunka are counter-intuitive and
fly in the face of conventional wisdom, which is precisely why implementation delivers
step changes in current levels of performance, margins and customer
responsiveness.
Contact us
for more information on why Lean is more than just about waste
reduction.
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