Making sense of Lean – Mr. Harada interview on equipment maintenance and the Toyota Production System (TPS) (Part 1)
The special “Lean Manufacturing” issue of our newsletter, published in June 2010, turned out to be very controversial. I perhaps should not have been surprised, as the title of my editorial was a punchy “Lean & TPM: beyond the hype, delivering sustainable results”… I highlighted the specifities of maintenance in China, which we are rather familiar with, and explained why they should be taken into account: a Lean production process puts enormous pressure on equipment reliability, a major weakness at most plants. One of the key points I raised was the necessity to reduce the breakdown rate before implementing autonomous maintenance activities as part of...
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