TABLE OF CONTENTS Inter-Company Sharing, Continuous Improvement is Not Enough, Lean Studies and Communication, Metrics for Determining Shop Health, and Work Cells.
The objective of this group of chapters is to get costs and flow time down while maintaining high quality. Chapter 16: Inter-Company Sharing discusses the merits of sharing technology and ideas between companies. Chapter 17: Continuous Improvement points out that the norms we are using may not be enough. Chapter 18: Lean Studies and Communication is a key way of making quantum leaps of improvement in costs and flow time without sacrificing quality. Chapter 19: Metrics for Determining Shop Health is a discussion of a frugal way of measuring shop efficiency and why the more sophisticated methods usually fail. Chapter 20: Work Cells provides some history lessons in using work cells and the strong successes of today when tied to lean studies, and the importance of being flexible being able to rapidly relocate and rearrange equipment.
Professor Chris Brown, Ph.D., of Worcester Polytechnic Institute cautions;
Lean principles and cost savings are important. However, if all a company does is cut costs, eventually it will be out of business. Applying lean-manufacturing principles cannot replace product innovation and the value enhancement that results, nor can they produce significant process innovations and the potentially large cost savings available there. American manufacturing...
