OCTOBER 19-20, 2012 - YMCA University of Science & Technology

Proceedings of the National Conference on
Trends and Advances in Mechanical Engineering,
YMCA University of Science & Technology, Faridabad, Haryana, Oct 19-20, 2012
LEAN MANUFACTURING STRATEGY –A REMEDY FOR TOUGH
TIMES
Naveen Kumar 1 and S.K Sharma 2
1
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology,Manav
Rachna International University,Faridabad, India
2 Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, NIT, Kurukshetra
Email:goelnavin_07@yahoo.co.in
Abstract
Lean is a management methodology that provides the perfect medicine for surviving and thriving during bleak
trading conditions as well as optimizing shrunken budgets. Japan in 1950s.in a country rebuilding its shattered post
war economy, the Toyota motor company developed a production system that has underpinned the company’s
success and given rise to the lean movement. Toyota production system rejected the belief that productivity could be
raised by working longer, harder and faster and presented the just in time alternative. This focused on delivery the
right products to the right place at the right time anything not involved in achieving that objective was deemed
suspect waste.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss a survival strategy for industry in tough time by means of lean principles and
philosophies. Tough time is the time for industries to follow lean guidelines and to look in to their business chain
from raw material to end customer in order to remove all types of waste. The paper provides some real help as to
how to survive in recession as there is little published research on this topic. This paper addresses a framework for
studying lean thinking, as well as principles of lean production, strategy for lean implementation and the 8 types of
waste.
Keywords: Lean thinking, waste, customer focus.
Introduction
Lean is defined as "a strategy for achieving significant continuous improvement in performance through the
elimination of all wastes of resources and time in the total business process .It evolved from Toyota after world war
2nd as a business strategy due to the limited resources available in Japan, in contrast to the vast resources available to
manufacturers in the united state. Its principles apply to nearly all business operations, from administration and
product design to hardware production. Lean manufacturing focuses on eliminating all sources of waste(Examples of
waste in manufacturing include overproduction, over processing, waiting, unnecessary part movement, excess
inventory and defects) by applying the following strategies. (1) One piece workflow, (2) Takt time, (3) Pull system.
Lean identifies bottlenecks in design and development processes that add unnecessary delays and cost. It can help to
create a more efficient system that reduces time to market without compromising on quality.
Lean has a key role to play in new product development and the improvement of existing products, including idea
creation, design for manufacture, assembly and test, rapid prototyping, product portfolio management, market and
competitor analysis, risk management, sales forecasting, setting key performance indicators, and value analysis to
reduce the cost of existing products.
The concept of ‘LM’ is derived from the methods developed at the shop floor of Toyota, which are described in
detail by authors like Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo. But, these concepts in the form of lean manufacturing system
(LMS) got an international recognition, as a result of the book, ‘The Machine that changed the world’, written by the
researchers (Womack and Jones, 1990). According to Womack Jones, and Roos, lean manufacturing uses less of
everything compared to mass production- half the human effort in the factory, half the manufacturing space, half the
investment in tools, and half the engineering hours to develop a new product. In addition, it requires keeping far less
than half of the needed inventory on site, results in many fewer defects, and produces a greater and ever-growing
variety of products. In short, it is called lean because it uses less, or the minimum, of everything required to produce
a product or perform a service. (Singh and Sharma 2009) discussed many benefits of lean manufacturing to Indian
industry. (Singh et al 2009) discussed the survival strategy for recessionary times by means of lean principles and
795