Lean For Your Organization – How to add value to your organization using lean concepts

WIN $200 Gift Certificate !
Are you interested in lean manufacturing? Can you think of ways in which you can help your industry using lean concepts? Or have you already done that? If so you can win $200 worth gift certificate from Amazon.com. This is all you have to do.

Write an article explaining the ways in which you can implement concepts and techniques of lean in your industry and send it to azabadurdeen@yahoo.com . At the end of the competition we will pick the winner and send you the gift certificate via email. Yes it is that simple. Below are the terms and conditions.

1. Articles should be at least 400 words long and should be written by you
2. You can use diagrams, images and videos to prove your point
3. Using real names of the organizations will help(but you have to get the authorization from those relevant)
4. One person can submit more than one article as far as they are clearly differentiable
5. Each article will be rated separately
6. Your article will be published on the blog over the time and might be edited before posting
7. You will take the responsibility for the content of the article
8. We will make the decision on what to publish and what not to
9. learnleanblog.com will make the final decision about the winners
Articles will be rated according to the below criteria;



So hurry up. Competition is open only for up to the end of August. Send your articles and win your gift card of $200.


Have any questions. Contact me at azabadurdeen@yahoo.com

Lean For Your Organization – learnleanblog.com competition

We in learnleanblog.com are planning to launch a contest named “lean for your organization” on the 30th of July 2008. Our main aim is to get our visitors to add value to the industries and organization they work for. We in learnleanblog.com (earlier known as learnlean.blogspot.com) have been blogging about lean manufacturing and related topics for two and half years now. We have discussed concepts, application of lean and benefits it will bring to any industry. In addition we have a good user base across the globe, serving different industries. We thought our visitors can add much more value to their industries and organizations with their knowledge in lean, than they do now. This is why we are launching this competition, to encourage users to look for new ways in which they can create value to their organizations and ultimately to the world.

Of course this is a competition. SO we are planning to award the winner of the competition with a gift certificate worth $200 from Amazon.com. Importantly all the contributors will be winners with the wealth they create for their organizations.

We are very optimistic about this approach towards lean. User participation and fresh ideas will decide the success of this competition. Ultimately the whole lean community will benefit from this. So we invite all of our visitors to share their thoughts and be a part of this competition.

We will give you all the details required in a blog post. Look for future emails and blog updates.

Lean manufacturing history – The Ford System

Lean manufacturing is mastered at Toyota. But roots of Toyota can be found in Henry Ford’s system of line assembly. In the Ford system they manufactured automobiles in large quantities of standard designs. It made the system highly efficient, delivering a product with low cost.

Corner stone of the Ford system is the standardized product. This lead to the standard processes. Workers can be trained easily. Anyone can become a worker in the Ford plant within no time. They had to perform only a small part of the full job like tightening a screw or oiling a part. Moving assembly line made it possible to manufacture in the phase Ford wants not the other way around. In other words workers had to adapt to the speed of the conveyer. This will remove the personal element from the production line. The full system was in a harmonization with the rhythm of the assembly line.

The same aspects bought Ford the efficiencies, created its downfall. People wanted vehicles to meet their requirements, not the other way around. So the main assumption of the system, standard product was not in demand anymore. Hence the systems had to change, but Ford refused to change.

On the other hand Toyota executives who studied the Ford system managed to identify the problems that system had. With the unique requirements of Japanese market they had to look for the ways to deliver variety of products within short time periods. This lead to the unique Toyota Production System (TPS).

Instead of the manufacturing and then looking for the market, Toyota designed a system to look at the market demand and deliver what they want when they want. This was known as the Just In Time or JIT manufacturing system. Toyota created a unique pull manufacturing system instead of the Ford push manufacturing system which then became the backbone of lean manufacturing.

RFID to support your supply chain

Lean manufacturing is directly dependent on a very tightly coupled supply chain both integral and external. Coordinating supply chain and elimination of problems in it is very important for the smooth lean operation. There are number of techniques making this possible. Barcode is one of the very old such systems. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is among the emerging technologies in this era.

Basically RFID functions as a barcode. It has a unique identifier embedded into that. This is read through radio frequencies in different stages of the supply chain to get the exact stage of the product in its supply chain. Since it is using radio frequency to read the information there is no requirement to have a clear visibility of the tag to read. It makes it easier to read the tags. So makes the technology very versatile.

I found below video interesting on this topic.

In the age of computer technology this can be used in Kanban, to monitor the WIP and to identify the areas of bottlenecks. But always obey the basics of lean manufacturing. Technology is the supporter not the driver of lean.