Week 3 Discussion – Theory of Constraints, Lean, and Workcenter Scheduling
Post a total of 3 substantive responses over 2 separate days for full participation. This includes your initial post and 2 replies to other students.
Respond to one or more of the following in a minimum of 175 words:
Describe an example where theory of constraints (TOC) was successfully applied to improve a process, or where you saw the potential for TOC to improve the process, in either a company you worked for or a company you were a customer at.
What is the lean concept and why is it important to study?
How can lean be applied to manufacturing and service processes?
What is work center scheduling and why is it important for firms to focus on?
Reply to at least 2 of your classmates. Be constructive and professional in your responses.
BY STEPHANIE
The lean concept focuses on eliminating waste of all kinds. This also includes non- value add activities. The lean process creates more value for the customer and learning about how to improve and reduce waste in production means swifter completion of products with less errors and better quality. This process has been applied to many different manufacturing organizations to streamline their production process. The process started with Toyota and has moved throughout the manufacturing industry as away to help improve the output of products and increase the bottom line. Lean is also being implemented into services lines to provide better service to their customer by removing barrier. Barriers in systems cause issues and waste and implementing the lean process removes those barriers and makes the process more efficient.
Work center scheduling is the process of organizing how the manufacturing of the process should be done. Once a hierarchy is created for manufacturing then the work center schedule can be created. The schedule pieces together how the manufacturing should be done to be the most efficient and the lean concept can be directly impacted in this part of manufacturing.
By Shunta
The main idea behind lean is to use the minimum number of resources possible to accomplish a task and to eliminate waste. This can be removing processes that are unnecessary or can be handled in a better way, but can also be cutting out waste by improving quality in each step of the process. For example, by teaching someone on the assembly line to quickly look for mistakes in items they receive and to check their work for defects before passing it on, the company saves resources that might otherwise be spent on defected products, either through re-working or through customer refunds. It also provides teaching opportunities for these employees to improve their processes and make the whole system more efficient.
This process, lean, is important to study because the end goal of any company is to make money and part of that is reducing costs. By eliminating waste, both in processes and inventory, the company saves money on the front end which equates to more profits for the company and much happier.
Solution Preview
Lean Concept
The primary aim of businesses under any circumstance often include the successful creation of profits by increasing the margin between the costs of production, and the price demanded the finished product. Consequently, the lean concept seeks to achieve this objective by significantly reducing the cost of production through a significant reduction in wastage during the production process (Achanga et al. 460).
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