Industrial Excellence in China: Lean Manufacturing, a Giant with Feet of Clay
Lean Manufacturing is often seen as a silver bullet. Carried out with religious zeal, its tools will magically solve every problem a factory may have. A general manager in the Suzhou area once told me that obtaining a TPM Award for his plant was his only goal; anything else was just a waste of time, a distraction. This expat was obviously on an upward career path and has already left China.
read moreMaking sense of Lean: Mr. Harada’s interview on equipment maintenance and the Toyota Production System (TPS) (Part 2)
This month I am proud to introduce the second part of Tom Harada’s interview on the link between maintenance and lean manufacturing. In this month’s interview, Tom Harada provides deeper and more specific insight into the subject, which many of our readers will feel familiar with. Maintenance is at the core of operating a lean production system.
read moreMaking 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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