This course will guide senior and operational managers through assessment of the processes in their organizations.  Attendees will learn to utilize a Value Stream Mapping approach to analyze the current state of the organization and identify opportunities of improvement such as manufacturing cells.

This course is an introduction to lean manufacturing concepts and principals, which prepares the organization for the implementation of Lean.  It introduces participants to the Lean methodology including: waste elimination, value stream mapping, 5S, and continual process improvement.

5S is a method to clean and organize the work environment as well as instill a discipline in the people for organization of work activity.  This is normally the first activity when implementing Lean in a work area.  The tools to organize the work area and motivate the personnel to maintain it will be discussed.

Much management activity is undertaken to correct mistakes that occur during production processes.  The effort expended is dependent on the training and experience of the personnel as well as the equipment used and the facility layout.  Poke Yoke is a term meaning Mistake Proofing.  Applying this approach involves a study of product, tooling, and facilities to identify items that could go wrong and developing physical ways to prevent mistakes.  Techniques for setting products and processes so that only the proper methods can be used in an activity will be covered.

Many times in traditional manufacturing, equipment requires extensive time and labor to be re-configured from one product to another.  This changeover or setup time is nonproductive since the equipment is not producing product.  Methods to reduce changeover time will be discussed and practical application of these techniques will be accomplished as class assignments.

The Theory of Constraints or Bottleneck Theory is based on the premise that the lowest capacity work center in an organization throttles the maximum output of that organization.  This class will explain the Theory and its application to factory scheduling.  Methods to determine the bottlenecks and techniques to relieve them will be addressed.

This course teaches participants to utilize Value Stream Mapping to identify waste within a manufacturing or administrative process.  Through the application of these techniques, students learn how to eliminate waste, shorten lead times, and focus on true value added activities.

This course explains the differences between push and pull production systems.  Pull Manufacturing synchronizes production operations to customer demand using methods such as visible signals and Lot Sizes of 1 to manage WIP inventory queues.  The factory layout supports flow of material from raw state to finished goods.  It eliminates waste of movement and other non-value added activities.

Scheduling for Pull Manufacturing requires a two-step process of establishing the total requirements and developing a balanced factory load over the time of the plan.  With this in place, the Pull Schedules can be constructed.  Use of Cycle Time, Takt Time, and demand as drivers of schedule execution will be discussed.  Cellular

The ability to produce products rapidly in small quantities gives a company a significant advantage in the marketplace.  The constraint to this objective has been manufacturing cost.  Cellular Manufacturing is a method of achieving these advantages in a cost-effective manner.  Process definition, equipment selection, floor layout, staffing, Kanban techniques, and mixed model scheduling will be explained using examples from your company. 

Visual Signals are positive methods to insure communication using minimum resources.  This course will explain the use of visual queues such as signs or color coding to signal a condition or an action that needs to be taken.  Applying this approach passes information without the need to stop work for verbal communications or incur the cost of written information. 

Kaizen means “Change for the Good”.  It is a philosophy of continual improvement with a plan to achieve a major goal through smaller steps.  The Deming Cycle will be addressed as a model for Kaizen.  Waste identification will be taught and methods to reduce it will be covered.  Rapid implementation approaches such as Kaizen Blitz will be discussed so that the participants will be able to show process improvements quickly.