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Session No. 1557

An Approach to Teach and Implement Lean Manufacturing Ramesh Narang Manufacturing Technology Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne, IN

Introduction

Companies have adopted lean manufacturing principles as a way to reduce costs, reduce lead times, improve customer satisfaction, and increase productivity. Lean manufacturing is a culture and philosophy for an entire enterprise. The process of becoming lean may mean transforming oneself from one's existing style of operations to an entirely different one. The process may require significant changes in the functions of the company.

Even though there are many examples of companies that have become more competitive and successful by adopting lean manufacturing principles and practices, there are many more examples of those who have not been as successful. Many organizations are not clear about what does it take to become lean. To convert from mass production to lean, they relate lean manufacturing to kanban system, or reduction of lot sizes to single-piece flow, or making a U- shaped cellular layout.

Many published articles in this area also, do not completely describe the process of going through the gradual and painful progress towards lean manufacturing. For example, there have been several articles that consider MRP and JIT as separate methodologies and others do not consider the linkage between basic inventory management principles with lean manufacturing.

This paper presents an approach to implement lean manufacturing from the existing condition of mass or batch production. The implementation consists of series of activities or projects that need to be done from start to finish and repeated again. Some projects have to be done before others can start. The paper also shows how some important principles of lean manufacturing can be taught using inventory management concepts.

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Narang, R. (2004, June), An Approach To Teach And Implement Lean Manufacturing Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13196