TGCC Chapter Meeting September 2017
JobshopLean:
A New Approach to Implement Lean for High-Mix Low-Volume Manufacturers
Dr. Shahrukh A. Irani
(President, Lean & Flexible, LLC)
The goal of any manufacturer is to reduce the total time that a customer must wait from the time that they place their order to the time that they receive their order free of defects. The Seven Types of Waste are activities that add (1) delays to the time that a customer must wait to receive their order and (2) costs to the price that the customer must pay to receive their order. There are thousands of high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) manufacturers whose factories cast, forge, injection mold, fabricate, machine, heat treat, etc. 100’s of parts with different manufacturing routings, materials, tolerances, due dates, lot sizes, etc. Without question, the revolutionary Toyota Production System (TPS) is the gold standard for how any business can pursue waste elimination without headcount reduction. But should a high-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturer implement Lean the same way as does Toyota, a low-mix high-volume (LMHV) manufacturer? The presenter’s answer is --- NO! Please click here to access a LinkedIn articles that lists the differences between an assembly line and a job shop and here to access a LinkedIn article that gives a brief introduction to JobshopLean.
Presentation Outline:
• Types of manufacturers other than Toyota
• Complexity of production flow in a job shop
• What is Lean?
• Why is Lean for Toyota ≠ Lean for job shops?
• Lean tools that are not suited for job shops
• Foundations of JobshopLean
• Rest of the House of JobshopLean
• Quick-start approach for implementing JobshopLean
• Example of a quick-start implementation
• Full-blown approach for implementing JobshopLean
• Key elements of a full-blown implementation
• Pursuing Continuous Improvement by eliminating the constraints that prevent the implementation of cells
• Software to implement JobshopLean
• Q&A
Q&A Following the Presentation
During this portion of the presentation, the speaker will discuss his answers to the following questions on HMLV manufacturing that were posed to him:
o What is the biggest barrier to implementing Lean in a High-Mix, Low-Volume (HMLV) shop?
o Since it can be a long time from one occurrence to another and historical record keeping is poor, how do you balance the need to have machine cycle times against the time it takes to gather the data?
o Overproduction has been called the mother of all wastes in a high volume shop. Is there a comparable waste for HMLV?
o I saw that your path to implementation included a rearrangement of the shop to better match up with the process flow. What percentage of repeat orders or consistent routings is needed to start to see benefits from shop floor rearrangement?
o Do you recommend starting the Lean journey with 5S or (Product Family Establishment and Value Stream Mapping)? On one slide you had an X next to VSM (where you said that it is a tool that is unsuitable for job shops) but then on a later slide you showed how you used VSM in a forge shop!
o Is multi-tasking a major cause of problems in these kinds of (HMLV) shops? If so, how do you recommend that we address it?
o Since level-loading is impossible in a job shop, how do you keep from overloading any or all resources as demand fluctuates?
Dr. Shahrukh A. Irani is the President of Lean and Flexible, llc, a consulting company that he started in 2014 to deliver consulting and training services in Lean for high-mix low-volume manufacturing (aka JobshopLean). He is also the President of the Houston Senior Chapter of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. Previously, from 2012-2014, he gained invaluable industry experience as the Director of IE Research at Hoerbiger Corporation of America, Inc., Houston, TX. In that position, he undertook projects to demonstrate the viability of JobshopLean in their high-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturing facilities. Prior to his industry job, from 1996-2012, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering (ISE) at The Ohio State University (OSU). His research at OSU produced JobshopLean, a comprehensive methodology to adapt Lean for high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) small and medium enterprises (SME). Also, his team developed the PFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit) software that facilitates the implementation of JobshopLean. During his sixteen years at OSU, he received the Outstanding Faculty Award for excellence in teaching from the ISE department’s graduating classes of 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2009 and the 2002 Charles E. MacQuigg Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Engineering. He served as the Director of the Facilities Planning and Design (FAPAD) division of the Institute of Industrial Engineers for 1999-2001 and 2001-2003. He is the Editor of the Handbook of Cellular Manufacturing Systems (1999, John Wiley). In 1996, Dr. Irani was voted Young Engineer of the Year by the Minnesota Federation of Engineering Societies and the Minneapolis Chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers