Thema: Lean Production

Lean material supply and provision concepts are crucial to an efficient production system. In the automobile production are common supply concepts: in-sequence material provision (JIS), vehicle specific sets and non-mixed provision. For the provision of sets containing different part clusters efficient picking processes are necessary. Picking is usually carried out in supermarkets close to the assembly line, which are replenished by warehouses. A scientific project of MAN Truck & Bus AG and the Technische Universität München aims at streamlining these processes and proposes to merge warehousing and picking stages. Prerequisite of a broad implementation of those one-stage material provision concepts is a change in the material supply and disposition strategy.

„Lean Production“ is a known as successful production concept increasing productivity of a company in the long-term. Implementing lean principles in production can be challenging for the organizational structure of a company. Insufficient holistic process models, missing interface definitions and inflexible management structures can be major limitations. This article analyses - with the example of a Swiss production site of a company in the medical engineering sector - the challenges for the organization associated with the implementation of lean principles in operations. Requirements for an adapted organizational structure are highlighted and alternative organizational structures outlined. Advantages and disadvantages of these alternatives are presented and a solution for the case-study example developed. Companies in a similar environment can get suggestions for the adaption of their own organizational structure when implementing lean management principles in their production.

Structures with historical background in industrial enterprises are often affected by a high degree of non-transparency and complexity. Reasons for this can be seen in heterogeneous processes and IT-environment. The adjustment of a tact-oriented project management system shows a possibility to achieve competitive advantages in the long-term. Other improvement potentials concerning the production process can be claimed by the application of a process-comprehensive Manufacturing Execution System (MES). Therefore an optimized adjustment of production should occur in two steps. On the one hand there has to be a tact-oriented restructuring of the production on the process level. On the other hand a MES solution, implemented on the system level, can operate as a support tool for the production.

Lean companies naturally use milkruns to improve their internal logistics. Approaches for the design of such milkrun cycles exist, but specific conditions of production are not accounted for. By showing typical development steps of the milkrun design, the correct design-approach for the specific situation becomes clear. Moreover the levers for further optimization and cost reduction are pointed out.

Regarding the optimisation of capacity utilisation the increasing product diversity has been an unsolved problem in job lot production for a long time. State of the art for solving such problems is the concept Heijunka, which means “levelled production”. The application of group technology offers the possibility to utilise this concept with regard to a low volume and high mixed production. In this context the characteristics of job lot production are investigated. Referring to these characteristics the concept Heijunka used in mass and serial production is adapted. The approach was applied in collaboration with Robert Bosch GmbH.

The trend of shifting abroad personnel-intensive mounting from Germany to foreign countries continues. The assembly systems widely differ in investment demand and in output. Since the sales figures can hardly be reliably forecasted any more, it is a necessity to construct extreme flexible systems which can be exchanged by more economical solutions, even when the production has already started and we know reliable sales figures and more reliable prognoses.

On the track to lean production it is necessary to develop new ratios, which should not only show us ex post what worked well and bad on the shopfloor. They should also help us to monitor and to improve the process itself. Important issues thereby are the capability of the workers and the flexibility of the production. Prof. Syska for these purposes has developed a concept for a lean production-controlling with ratios which is based on three columns: on the one hand the of the market perceived performance, on the other hand the process factors an as the third column the powering factors which are necessary for the change process.