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Lean Six Sigma and Waste

By on July 3, 2012 in Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

§Lean operations display the following characteristics:

üThe elimination of non-value adding activity – waste

üOnly producing what is required, when it’s required

üClose links in the value chain including supply chain input (JIT)

üDoing things right first time

üEnsuring processes are robust

 

 

§Many of the techniques are simple and common sense
§These Lean techniques and ‘mindset’ are often mistakenly associated with volume manufacturing.
§However the same principles have also been successfully applied in Project Management, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, HR etc.

Lean Product Development

By on April 19, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

People & Partners

– Chief Engineer Role in Development phase (misunderstood in Aerospace Industry)

§ Highly experienced in Product development, small team, clear technical authority over all internal & external Eng’s, Voice of the Customer, guardian of the specifications, not a Programme Manager.  Unity of leadership
§ Decide Product & trade off between design/ Manufacturing/ Suppliers & Customer Support/ ILS so that product fulfils all requirements
§ Identify & remove Development roadblocks internal & partners/suppliers
§ Dev. schedule, product recurring costs, product reliability & op costs,

– Balance functional expertise & Programme integration

§ Programme Plateau (early concept phase & integration tasks) or Functional Plateau
(Detail design phase, cross programme optimization & learning, standardization, product/process skills)
–  Develop towering technical competence
§ Proactive hiring, early experience in other functions: Manufacturing, Customer and  Support/
§ Link to HR (Expert network, competence Mgt, specific technology dev. skills,  process)

–  Suppliers/Partners integration into Product Development

–  Build in learning & Continuous Improvement

§ Companys’ culture are mainly based on history & diff. functions (customer value,
multicultural…)

– Build a culture to support Excellence & Relentless Improvement

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Lean Product Development Model

By on April 18, 2012 in General, Uncategorized

Lean Process principles

1 Focus on what the Customer Values Product (processes to assess Value vs Customer requirement, starting from clear definition of Customer requirements) Process (Plateau & Phases)

2 Front load Development & explore thoroughly alternative solutions (max. design space) Early Development phase (time allocation, budget allocation, expert teams {rotating}) Structure compliance with Quality gates don’t reopen previous decisions. Simulation more rigorous, modeling, verification of design robustness, design reviews {multi company & multi function}, trade off curves for design alternatives including risk & opportunity assessments

3 Leveled Product Development process flow VSM, 7 wastes, multi-programs resources (planning & Mgt integrated with scheduled milestones, top to bottom & across functional interdependences)

4 Rigorous standardization Design guidelines & standards Catalogues (standards owners) & supporting data, Experts network => transfer of knowledge, lessons learned => design standards… software modular components

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Lean Production

By on April 16, 2012 in General, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Toyota is the most documented Lean Company, talking about Lean Production.

 

1991 – The machine that changed the world – This was the first time Toyota opened it’s doors to external consultants based on the TPS (Toyota Production System) developed by Womack and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The 5 Steps to Lean” (specify value, identify the value stream, make the value flow, let the customer pull, pursue perfection) were defined in this book.

1996 – Lean Thinking (Womack and Jones) – Easier to read, still based on TPS (Manu) with Case Studies

1997 – Concurrent Engineering Effectiveness – Jeff Liker and based on some of Toyota’s Engineering Principles

2002 – Lean Enterprise Value  –

2004 – The Toyota Way – Jeff Liker – Business Philosophy and 14 Management Principles

2006 – The Toyota Product Development System – Jeff Liker – based on the product development system not manufacturing. The product development system is the key behind the TPS and this is the first book that explores Toyota’s PDS and this is their main competitive advantage. Easier to replicate the TPS than the PDS. 13 Principles broken down, easy to read and you can dip in and out of the book.

2007 – Toyota Talent –  Jeff Liker – How to develop engineers

2007 – The Lean Product Development Guidebook –

 

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Lean Engineering

By on April 12, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Manufacturing has a relatively small influence on the overall cost and quality of the product or service supplied.

Remember the Value Stream?

When Lean principles are applied across all the functions in the value stream, true competitive advantage can be gained.

This is sometimes known as Lean Enterprise Lean Product Development demands an integrated multi-disciplined approach.

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Why Lean Development ?

By on April 9, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized
  • Improving your service and manufacturing systems can only give you limited gains – this is only half the opportunity
  • There is more scope of improvement opportunities if you target the engineering of your service, products and process’
  • It can be more challenging as it is not as easy to see waste and flow
  • Many organisations have implemented lean and explored opportunities in all departments (design, purchasing, engineering, finance, HR etc)
  • They feel that this is what gives them an edge over their competitors
  • Assist in achieving swifter new products development

E.g., Toyota, Ford, Nokia and others,

We understand that we are not Toyota !!!!  However, it is important to understand some of the main differences between the Toyota culture and conventional business cultures when they develop new products as it will help you see where we can make changes to grow stronger as a company.  Also, it will enable you to understand where development systems have originated from.

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Lean Engineering in Lean Six Sigma

By on April 8, 2012 in Information Technology, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Lean Six Sigma challenges for Service and Product Development are

  • Short life cycles for service offerings, products and technologies
  • Integrated development and quality approach with suppliers
  • Customer expectations becoming more demanding
  • Technology (hard/software) becoming increasingly complex
  • Extremely high requirements for service and manufacturability
  • High impact of poor OTOQOC performance on confidence
  • High costs of development of complex services and products
  • High cost of post design changes, amendments & failures

Short life cycles for both products and technologies.

[Comment: This requires dynamic changes in product designs be managed at the sub-assembly level and coordinated across product lines to gain the most synergy for our development efforts.]

Customers have rising expectations for quality of total service [Comment: Customers don’t care if the problem is a handset or service provider.]

Increasing number of product development projects.

[Comment: Nokia has chosen to compete in all technology areas.  Since technology has not yet consolidated around one or two standards, we face the need to innovate and refresh all product lines on a regular basis.  Most of our competitors are not attempting this same approach.]

Products must be capable of manufacture in the millions.

[Comment: Mistakes cannot be made in production, right the first time is essential or we will not effectively compete in this business.]

Reliance on component parts quality from suppliers.

[Comment: We do not control our own destiny for quality but must seek exceptional partners who can contribute to our overall effort on behalf of our customers.]

Software is complex and interoperability is essential & interoperability is essential.

[Comment: Again, “right the first time” is the rule for software as well as hardware.  We also rely heavily on standards and industry partnerships to assure that we maintain seamless integration between hardware manufacturers and service providers.]

 

 

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Lean Six Sigma with Poka Yoke

By on April 6, 2012 in Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

‘Poka Yoke’ is a technique for eliminating errors, used by Black Belts for solution generation and preparing implementation;

such that it is …Impossible to make mistakes, …Inexpensive, …Very effective, …Based on simplicity and ingenuity.

“poka” means an inadvertent mistake, “yoke” means to prevent, it originates by mr. Shigeo Shingo (1909-1990) in Japan.

Error proofing is a very simple technique.

You should keep it in mind at all times, but particularly when you are designing the solution or the improvement

Ideally you should prevent all possibility of the problem occurring, elmination;

If you can’t do this, you should then try to

  • flag (identify quickly, every time the problem occurs),
  • facilitate (make it difficult to create the problem)
  • mitigate (reduce the effects when the problem does occur)

…in that order!

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Lean techniques for Lean Enterprise

By on April 2, 2012 in General, Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

There is a long list of techniques that characterise the flow, pull and perfection parts of the Lean idea .

Notice how must time is always given to ‘Quick Changeover’; this is important since whilst things are stopped, the value stream is not flowing

Notice also that there isn’t any “Do this!”,  rather what we learn are techniques to improve the flow of value streams .

If you can’t flow then pull is the next step .

And you can not do it all at once, so every improvement is a step on the way to perfection, but you never get there .

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the aim of Lean Six Sigma

By on March 22, 2012 in Lean Six Sigma, Uncategorized

Remember this – Is this what we are aiming at?

 

  • This customer values time (speed) at any cost
  • Most of our customers value a specific balance of quality, cost and time (delivery)
  • But no one values waste
  • So when we are thinking of ‘lean’ we are aiming at reducing the non-value adding gaps in the value chain
Aim to achieve PULL
  • Produce only what the customer requires
  • Improved communication between processes
  • Standard method for communicating between processes – Kanban
  • Production system can respond to changes in customer demand
  • Decreases Inventory levels
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