Lean Manufacturing in a Small Shop

By admin • on April 11, 2009

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Comments

By hornstra1 on October 26th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

I do not pay respect to you, sir. how many have got the sack at your place? viva lean.

By 1redeyedwizard on November 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am

Lean Manufacturing is a joke. All that it has done in our shop (about 900 guys on the floor) is increase the amount of salary personnel. What we have is a bunch of people not spending time on making product. They are making $60k a year to do 5S and paint lines on the floor. Ask anybody that actually works for a living in a manufacturing enviroment, and that wasn’t misinformed in college, LEAN is a joke, and all that it will do is put more American’s out of work.

By OldZeb on November 13th, 2008 at 1:32 am

A waste of two minutes — we are told nothing about “lean.” If this is a teaser to get one to pay big bucks to train on The Lean System it has failed its goal.

By JFK2112 on November 26th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

I raise my glass to you Redeye, we had a “Paint Lines On the Floor” guy, in our plant of 120 guys. Lean’s a joke

By chas11365 on November 30th, 2008 at 12:55 am

The ideas of lean work, to reduce waste. If you are not identifying waste and eliminating it, you are not doing lean. Lean DOES work, when done right. And you can bet that your competition is doing it, or will be soon.

By 4plastics411com on December 8th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

Lean = profit…. The more that lean manufacturing is implemented, the better your profit margin…one of the keys to lean being STANDARDIZATION!

By harleypiper on December 12th, 2008 at 10:04 pm

the reason lean is needed .
to offset the outragous wages paid to 50%of a companys union employees,who cant cooperate by nature with each other or management to improve the very company they work for.

By omarquina7 on December 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm

does lean really equals profit? don’t get me wrong I’m a big lean enthusiast. but I have seen several examples of lean implementation failures because of lack in systemic implementation.

By 4plastics411com on December 26th, 2008 at 11:55 am

Very true…I’ve seen what happens in a shop that overdoes it…but when key focus points of lean are implemented, it can have a huge impact on your bottom line…but, for instance…”the line painting guy”…a bit overdone, don’t you think? But when people are in “idle mode”..regardless what position they are in…PAINT THE LINES!

By nim279 on January 6th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

Lean = good, lean gone bad = LAME –> Lean as Misguidedly Executed. If lean causes layoffs, etc, it’s because the manager doing it has no idea what lean is really all about.

By travisg130 on January 11th, 2009 at 12:42 am

another example of lean gone bad, the past four years at my manufacturing company. Soon to shut our doors because of a multitude of reasons originating from similar Lean Manufacturing

By somedude8319 on February 16th, 2009 at 6:05 am

man, i fully inderstand. the manager wants individual hold on our tool carts for eye bolts that we use. it ends up being a wreck. i work in a small shop that is completely overcrowded by display boards. i swear there are display boards covering every square inch of usable space. the boards are poorly organized and oversized.

By hollandturbine on February 20th, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Lean is sometimes sold to accountants who often disregard legitimate incompatibilities with the manufacturing processes and technology they must use to produce their products…it can work for some but it is not a one size fits all philosophy.

By aivilik on March 9th, 2009 at 5:59 am

I would think that there are probably more than one reason for lean manufacturing resulting in layoffs, not all of which would be bad. If going lean reduces the need for labor, then that’s good for the company in terms of reduced expenses. Less labor = running leaner.

By aivilik on March 9th, 2009 at 6:03 am

Line painting is not necessarily a useless exercise. The whole point of lean is to optimize and streamline the system. Compartmentalization (in some cases, this means line painting) eliminates ambiguity about what goes where and what doesn’t go where. In this sense, everyone understands equally how things are done, ie; how the system works. Line painting is a one time expense/exercise that can have a large payoff in terms of efficient organization and therefore efficient operation.

By aivilik on March 9th, 2009 at 6:09 am

Bingo. Unions can and do kill companies; look at GM and Chrysler. Unions are not an automatic death sentence for a company, but they often take their entitlement mentality far enough to really hurt a company’s ability to be competitive within its industry. You just can’t pander to these union jagoffs when you have to compete with Asian companies; they can manufacture anything for far less than we in the USA can, primarily because of constant unreasonable union demands on their employers.

By aivilik on March 9th, 2009 at 6:14 am

Lean does = increased profit if it’s implemented successfully, but that’s just the trick; you’re talking about major transformational change, which is never easy; in fact, it will most likely be the most challenging endeavor a company ever undertakes. It should always be taken extremely seriously. Failure is not an option.

By RayAir1 on April 9th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

lean manufacturing= job elimination.

By RayAir1 on April 9th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

not all the unions fault dumb-dumb. Toyota guys get paid about the same as UAW.

You dumb ass.