Lean Manufacturing: One Piece Flow and Cellular Manufacturing

Cellular manufacturing was one of the first lean concepts to be adapted in the United States; however, it was often misunderstood.  A lean manufacturing cell involves placing the equipment, people, materials, and methods in a sequence in order to complete entire products, assemblies, or sub-assemblies.  Our goal is to create one piece flow to the rate of customer demand; sometimes, we cannot implement one piece flow, so we design specific sized buffers in between operations as a stopgap measure.  In this video, the concept of cell manufacturing and one piece flow are defined.

Standardized Work

Standardized work is a fundamental lean manufacturing concept.  In creating standardized work, we attempt to create a repeatable method for meeting customer requirements.  For example, we might create standardized work in order to assemble 1 automobile every 30 seconds.  Or, we might create standardized work to process 1 insurance claim every 45 seconds.  Standard work and standardized work generally refer to the same concept.  In this video, the concept of standard work is explained:

Faster Changeovers and Smaller Batches

Our October 2011 newsletter is out, and we're talking about utilizing quick changeover to achieve smaller batches. Why would we want smaller batches? Smaller batches allow us more flexibility to build what our customer needs in the quanitity that it is needed; small batches allow us to shorten lead-times and reduce inventory. To learn more, visit:
http://www.emsstrategies.com/newsletter100111.htm.