Minimize Waste, Maximize Profit, Reduce Pollution

Lean manufacturing, which focuses on elimination waste, reduce pollution in the product process is the production system of 21st century. our company has initiated and begin with value stream analysis which is a method of analyzing all the steps in the business processes to determine which add value and which process should be improved.

Lean principles has become standard operating procedure in our industries, the reason being that, lean principles have a proven track record of operational and strategic success which ultimately translate into increased value to the customer, the heart of lean is the determination of value for customer and reducing pollution.

There is little doubt that, lean programme undertakings in the case have had significant impacts

These include:

Creating and understanding the need to change

Revising processes practice which had been untouched four years

Engaging staff to enable them to challenge and question their working practices

Lean manufacturing is so far leading manufacturing paradigm with fundamental focus on the systematic elimination of waste that hold the potential to produce meaningful environmental results. Lean strategies until has reduced the amount of energy, raw materials and non product output associated with it manufacturing processes and many of these reduction have translated into important environmental improvement. in fact lean implementation has significantly expands the pollution prevention cultural , utilizing project matrix, leadership, strong interpersonal skills and with the application of kaizen and lean principles, six sigma principles, aligned with continuous project management as well as organizing training and monitoring members to use these tools.

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INTRODUCTION

Pollution is exceptionally major global concern, everyone is a stakeholder as we are all inhabitants of this earth and have a responsibility for the success of the environmental protection programs in our respective community by cooperation and actively participating in making the atmosphere pollution free. loryrichhubpage.com.

Pollution prevention is to be able to manage pollution, utilize raw materials and manufacturing technologies which minimize emission, discharge waste, means curtailing pollution before its happens .Pollution prevention through waste minimization is the preferred approach because it can reduce future liabilities and provide greater protection of public health and the environment. www.Broward.org

The Chinese company has gone lean and its main idea of going lean or practices lean operation is to go green, going green means to live a good as an individual as well as the community in way that is friendly to the natural environment which is sustainable for the earth, the Chinese contributing towards maintaining the natural ecological environment and persevering the plant and its natural system and resource. We also practice lean to reduce poll3ution:

Conserve resource

Conserve energy

Reduce waste

Protect the earth

All these five principles are important in protecting the environment from harm as well as helping to ensure that earth is sustainable. recyclingfante.com2001

Dealing with lean is basically all about getting the right things to the right place at the right time, minimizing waste and being flexible and open to change. AAA drafting services 1991.

Practicing lean also mean maximize customer value whole minimizing waste, lean organization understand customer value focus. The ultimate good for lean organization is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creating process that has zero waste. Techniques and strategies to help lean environment and other specialist on the shop floor identify and eliminate waste.

The Chinese company approach focuses on the identification and how to pursue environment waste, we take closer look at the cost and waste, raise awareness of what could be done different, more effectively, standardization goes a long way to cut waste by way of reducing recycle and bringing in science intuitive and creating problem solving.

Waste management programme in the company have a complete management support in order to achieve the ultimate goal of eliminating or minimizing waste. This commitment is demonstrated by management and passed on to employees working in comes that generate waste. Employees are one of the best resources for waste.

Management approaches includes:

Declaring the waste

Committing resource to implement change that will eliminate or minimize waste

Providing employee training in waste minimization

Establishing a task force or committee to review or identify waste

Waste assessments conducted to measure waste minimization progress,

Identify the amount of waste generated by the various process

Identify the major material loses and their causes

Identify and evaluate potential waste minimization methods

Itemize current waste management expenditure and estimate the costs of alternative waste minimization practice.

Maintaining and Improving Equipment

To help achieve high equipment effectiveness is the use of preventive maintenance programmed. Effective productive maintenance (PM) requires that operators take responsibility for proper equipment operation, daily cleaning, and monitoring and basic equipment upkeep. Total Productive Maintenance seeks to involve workers in all departments and levels, from the plant-floor to senior executives, to ensure effective equipment operation. Autonomous maintenance, a key aspect of TPM, trains and focuses workers to take care of the equipment and machines with which they work.

One aim of Total Productive Management (TPM) is zero breakdowns, the virtual elimination of equipment malfunctioning and equipment-related sources of production defects. TPM focuses on preventing breakdowns (preventive maintenance), “mistake-proofing” equipment (or poka-yoke) to eliminate equipment malfunctions and product defects, making maintenance easier (corrective maintenance), designing and installing equipment that needs little or no maintenance (maintenance prevention), and quickly repairing equipment after breakdowns occur (breakdown maintenance).

We also practice another essential manufacturing tool referred to as total production maintenance. This is different from the routine or occasional maintenance that has to be performed having no downtime scheduled (Rohanfalcona June 25 2010).

Another techniques is the value stream mapping- this is a technique involves flow charting the steps activities material flow communication and other process that are involved with a process or transformation, value stream mapping helps the organization identify the non-value adding element in a targeted process. The technique is frequently used to support pollution prevention planning in organization. Joseph Roumm, (1994).

Value Stream Mapping (VSM)

Womack and Jones (1996) visualize the value stream as raw materials along with knowledge and information enter the system upstream (the suppliers); and, products or services of value flow out from the system downstream (the customers). The individual processes that take place in between are those that add value to the product or service as it flows through them. It is a simple but powerful model. If an activity or process does not add value, it is eliminated.

The value stream map, developed at Toyota, is a tool that:

Allows you to diagram your current value stream;

Identifies the bottlenecks that prevent you from making what your customers want, when they want it;

Develops a vision of what your future lean system should look like. Value stream mapping gives you the “Aha!” feeling – things become obvious.

Value stream mapping involves step-by-step tracing of the activities that are involved in, ultimately, the final product or service being delivered to the customer. These steps are taken to identify lean techniques that can improve the flow and eliminate waste in the process.

The Chinese company continually improve pollution by practicing kaizen principles to foster culture where employees are empowered to identify and solve problem. The company train leaders to recognize environmental management system, Environmental management system is a set of process and practice that enables an organization to reduce its environment impacts and increase its operating efficiency, E.M.S helps our company to address its regulatory demands in systematic and cost effective manner. There are number of measures put in place to mitigate.

Reviewing the company environmental goals

Analysis its environmental impacts and legal requirement

Setting environmental objective and targets to reduce impacts and comply with legal requirement

Establishing programs to meet these objective and target , monitoring and measuring progress in achieving the objective

Ensuring employee environmental awareness and competence, reviewing progress of the E.M.S and making improvement www. U.S environmental protection agency.com

Pull the product

Pull systems eliminate waste of handling, storage, expediting, obsolescence, repair, rework, facilities, equipment, and excess inventory (work-in-process and finished). Pull systems consist of small lots, low inventories, better communication, and management by sight. To reduce waste Ohno developed the pull production method where each stage of a process produces exactly what the immediate downstream stage (customer) requests; in effect material is pulled through the process by each stage producing only what is demanded of it from the next stage. This is in contrast to the push production wherein every stage produces according to a pre-planned schedule, then pushes material to the next stage, whether that next stage is ready for it or not. Converting the manufacturing process and the office process from a push system to a pull system can enable the entire company to run more smoothly and efficiently.

Quality at the Source (or “Do It Right the First Time”)

Quality at the Source, also called “Do It Right the First Time”, means that quality should be built into the production process in such a way that defects are unlikely to occur in the first place – or insofar as they do occur, they will be immediately detected. Lean Manufacturing systems often refer to the Japanese word “Jidoka” which means that problems should be identified and eliminated at the source. The following processes are used;

Poka Yoke – Simple methods for in-line quality testing (not just visual inspection), sometimes referred to as “Poka Yoke”, are implemented so that defective materials do not get passed through the production process. In Poka-Yoke, 100% of the units are tested as part of the production process. These measures are performed in-line by the production workers (not the quality control team).

Intentional shutdowns – When defects are generated, production is shut down until the source of the defect can be solved. This helps ensure a culture of zero tolerance for defects and also prevents defective items from working their way downstream and causing bigger problems downstream.

The Management strategy over the years is to identify and leverage pollution prevention opportunities to help reduce the greenhouse gases the use of hazardous materials and the use of natural resources while contributing to a greener and more sustainable economy

The Chinese company have also provided technical expertise to provide effort to increase energy efficiency, we also facilitate information sharing, on hazardous materials and provide technical expertise and support for green chemistry, we also reduce the use of water conservation of other natural resources to protect ecosystem, we also demonstrate to businesses, government and consumers how pollution prevention save money, protect workers’ health, protect natural resources.

The company is determined to achieve the broad mission of E.P.A pollution prevention program which is to prevent pollution at the source, promote the use of greener substances and conserve natural resource which strive to ensure that our children as grandchildren inherit a world that is as good as today on preferable better. This strategic plan will guide the E.P.A program as its works to achieve its mission over the next five years and contribute to the development of a sustainable world American E.P.A 2004

CONCLUSION

Environmental waste do not add value to the customer, environmental waste can also directly affect production flow time quality and cost. Chinese company has an environmental management system EMS (Environmental Health System, they are personnel who identify the key environmental impacts associated with each and make stream mapping techniques used to help lean practitioners focus on eliminating non value added activity during lean implementation. Ebah Alguns 2006

Policies are provided and integrated approach to environmental management that focus on performance improvement rather than regulatory compliance uses economic incentives to encourage clean manufacturing and the adaptation of pollution prevention technologies and process and forges public private partnership for improving environment quantity.

The company has made a concerted effort to incorporate pollution prevention more fully into it regulation function. Each month the company pollution prevention review activities that could benefit from incorporation of pollution prevention opportunities. Technology is used to solve pollution problem, public awareness and adoption of more effective antipollution measures which is implemented.

Question 3

INTRODUCTION

Improving efficiencies by eliminating waste is often the most effective way to boost the profitability of a business. The seven wastes a tool that is used in lean manufacturing is to identify and categories the waste generated from a process. By identifying and categories the waste it possible to improve efficiencies across many different aspects of the production line, seven (7) wastes in lean manufacturing apply to all manufacturing environment. Seven wastes identify in Chinese manufacturing and lean manufacturing includes:

Over production: is when a company produce more than what the customer requires or product of item where there are no order for them, this type of manufacturing is extremely expensive as of result in higher storage costs and a lower quality products over production is the worst waste as it multiplies all the other waste. It increases defects, inventory processing, waiting unnecessary motion and transport.

Transportation: this is the unnecessary movement of information product or item from one area to another, minimizing the length of transport would reduce cost while also improving overall quality of the product as the risk of damage from handling is also reduced.

Inappropriate processing: is when you produce product of a higher quality than required. This may be due to malfunction equipment, errors in rework, poor process design bad, communication and not checking what the customer needs are.

Unnecessary inventory: excessive inventory, wasteful process such as over production and waiting, this waste category can be incredibly expensive as an excessive inventory.

Excess motion: motor relate to people moving around the work space wasting time and effort, all kind of unnecessary motion can cause poor standard work practice, areas of work that requires walking, lifting and other potentially strenuous movement must be analyzed carefully to uncover areas of improvement in human efficiencies through ergonomics.

Defect- defects can be caused by bad manufacturing processes caused by human errors or equipment. This type of waste directly affects a company’s net income and as often a significant part of total manufacturing cost. Defects on result in the recall of products, and it take additional time and therefore increase the cost of the finished product.

Waiting: Goldratts theory of constraints suggest that a claim is no stronger than its weakest “link” and the overall factory’s output is reduced by as much therefore time as there is time spent waiting-if people, equipment, materials, information delay, the production process tie is wasted and the cost of product will be increased.

Worker Involvement

In order to ensure that ideas for eliminating non value-added activities are acted upon, the power to decide on changes to the production processes are pushed down to the lowest level possible (i.e. normal workers) but any such changes are required to meet certain requirements. For example, at Toyota workers are encouraged to implement improvements to the production processes but the improvement must have a clear logic and must be implemented under the supervision of an authorized manager and the new process must be documented in a high level of detail covering content, sequence, timing and outcome.

Two common ways to encourage worker involvement in the continuous improvement process are:

Kaizen Circles – One way of increasing the levels of worker involvement is to implement Kaizen Circles in which groups of say 5-7 workers are formed to generate ideas for solving particular problems. Typically a Kaizen Circle will meet and at the end of that period will present some proposals to their managers on how to solve particular problems. Active involvement/support by managers is critical to the success of Kaizen Circles.

Suggestion Programs – Another way of increasing worker involvement is having an active suggestion program where people are strongly encouraged to make suggestions and rewarded for suggestions that are successfully implemented. Often the cost of the reward is quite small relative to the value that is created for the company by implementing the improvement.

In relating (kaisen principle) to the case study, you realized that kaisen principle was implemented by way of workers participation decision making, improving waste, safety and also improving the life of the workers, by given training to empowered them to make productive decision, evaluate and suggest control for hazards arising in their work areas, employee training in one or more occupational safety, adverse health effects on noise, ergonomic hazards, electrical hazards etc.

kaisen is a system that involves every employee from upper management to the cleaner. Everyone is encouraged to come up with small improvement suggestion on a regular basis. This is not on a month or once a year activity, it is continues kaisen is based on making little changes on a regular basis improving productivity, safety and reducing waste kaisen is based on making changes anywhere that improvement can be made. kaisen philosophy is to do it better, make it better, improve it even if it isn’t broken because we don’t, we can’t, compete with those who do. (Free kaizen guide 2003)

kaisen involves setting standards and improving those standards, kaisen also involves providing the training materials and supervision that is needed for employee to achieve higher standard and maintaining their ability to meet those standard. kaizen focuses on identifying problem changing standards to ensure the problem stay solved.

For example Toyota is well known as one of the leaders in using kaizen in 1999, 7000 Toyota employees submitted over 75 suggestion of when 99% were implemented (free kaizen guide). One of the concepts of kaizen is that, if there is no action there can be no success. Kaizen also involves in a significant charge in the corporate culture.

Just-in-Time Production/Kanban

Just-in-time production, or JIT, is about not having more raw materials, WIP than what are required for smooth operations. JIT leverages the cellular manufacturing layout to reduce significantly inventory and work-in-process (WIP). In his view, Nahmias (1997) posited that JIT was used to address waste such as WIP materials, defects and poor scheduling of parts delivered. It enables a company to produce the products its customers’ want, when they want them, in the amount they want. Monden (1998) also proclaimed that JIT enables the internal process of a company to adapt to changes in demand pattern by producing the right product at the right time and in the right quantity. Levy (1997) also argued that JIT is the backbone of Lean Manufacturing. JIT techniques work to level production, spreading production evenly over time to foster a smooth flow between processes.

It is essentially a statistical decision making technique that is used for the selection of a limited number of tasks that produce significant overall effect. It uses the Pareto principle (also known as 80/20 rule) the idea that by doing 20% of the work you can generate 80% of the benefit of doing the whole job; Or in terms of product quality management, a large majority of problems (80%) are produced by few key causes (20%). This is known as the vital few and the trivial many.

The 80-20 Principle can and should be used to ensure maximum yield and multiply the profitability of corporations and the effectiveness of any organization or individual. Pareto Analysis uses the Pareto Principle – also known as the “80/20 Rule” – which is the idea that 20% of causes generate 80% of results. With this tool, we’re trying to find the 20% of work that will generate 80% of the results that doing all of the work would deliver.

The 80-20 Principle can and should be used by every intelligent person in their daily life. It can multiply the profitability of corporations and the effectiveness of any organization or individual.

The value of the Pareto Principle for a manager is that it reminds you to focus on the 20 percent that matters. Of the things you do during your day, only 20 percent really matter. Those 20 percent produce 80 percent of your results. Identify and focus on those things. When the fire drills of the day begin to sap your time, remind yourself of the 20 percent you need to focus on. If something in the schedule has to slip, if something isn’t going to get done, make sure it’s not part of that 20 percent.

Using Pareto thinking and principle is to also reduce waste and maximize yield of output. The Pareto sole rule is that, in any set of things, e.g. worker, customers, a few 20 % are vital and many percent (80%) are considered to be trivial. It could also mean that, only 20% of product defect causing 80 percent of product problem. It is also known by project managers that 20 percent of work usually consumes 80 percent of the time and resources.

Inventory waste also occupies 80 percent of the warehouse space, so 80 percent of your inventory line items (stock keeping unit comes from 20 % of your vendors. 20 percent of tasks is very likely to diver or produce 80 percent of results (pinnacle management associate 2001)

In practical application to reduce cost, identify which 20 percent are using 80% of the resources, if members of this segment are not top profit generators consider charging them to the resources they consume or shift services away from this sector.

Personal productivity, to maximize productivity 80% of time is spent on the trivial identify which activities produces the most value so your company and then shift your focus so that you concentrate on the vital few 20%, discontinue doing the once that are not yielding.

In profit making, Pareto principle focuses attention on the vital few 20 percent customers in order of profit and then focusing sales activities, 80-20 rule predict that 20 percent of the customers generate 80% of the revenue Arthur W. Hafner ball state university March 31 2001.

Question 1

INTRODUCTION

The value chain is a concept from business management that was first described my Michael Porter in his book competitive advantage 1995; it has become very useful approach to gain comprehensive view of the various stages. Business value chain model can be used to examine the various activities of the firm and how interested it would be in order to provide and perform these competitive advantages.

In business, we used raw inputs and add value by turning them into something worth, the more value you create; the more people will be prepared to pay a good price for your product. Michael porters 2012 define value as the amount buyers are willing to pay for what a firm provides. An articles from mindstool.com Value Chain Analysis describes the activities within and around an organization, and relates them to an analysis of the competitive strength of the organization position, Porter (1985). It therefore evaluates which value each particular activity adds to the organization’s products or services.

According to Porter (1985), Value-chain analysis is employed in order to cut costs (by increasing yield, improving efficiency, and eliminating waste.

Porter distinguishes between primary activities and support activities. Primary activities are directly concerned with the creation or delivery of a product or service. They can be grouped into five main areas: inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. Each of these primary activities is linked to support activities which help to improve their effectiveness or efficiency. There are four main areas of support activities: procurement, technology development (including R&D), human resource management, and infrastructure (systems for planning, finance, quality, information management among others). In his views (Porter), he believed that the ability to perform particular activities and manage the linkages between these activities is a source of competitive advantage.

In the case study there were number of waste identified these are

Factories are divided into various department.( transportation waste)

Generating a single part or set of parts (inventory waste)

poor communication between workers and management (waiting waste)

young people from rural areas with limited education (labor waste)

increased accident and safety incident (defect waste)

In manufacturing business, when you cut down waste, you can see higher profits, and higher profit mean taking your business to the next level. Wasted materials resources also become economic issue as more pressure is being put on manufacturing especially to clean up their operation. businessknowledgesource.com

There are number of ways that waste can be cut down in manufacturing plant. The process of cutting down waste is often referred to as Lean Manufacturing. Waste is defined as anything that does not add value to the product, many companies love cutting down waste for profits by using lean. Lean program has been used widely in the past four decade as a catalyst for cost cutting and continuous improvement.

In the case study, there were number of waste identified the company being able to identify the problems manage to put in place measures to reduced it by deciding to go lean as well as increasing profitability and most importantly produce quality and just in time. As I quote from the case study – since its opening, when production was shifted from another facility in the city of Guangzhou, the plant has been configured on lean manufacturing principle. This has resulted in significant increase in labor productivity; A new product would have a 90 days lead time from when an order is placed by a brand to when the finished product is delivered to market. Today the factory has an average 60 days lead.

Inbound Logistics

Lean techniques involve managing manufacturing processes so products are produced according to customer’s requirement or needs and very little inventory is kept on hand. Large gains are realized as inventory storage costs are dramatically reduced. Inventory is likely to deteriorate or become obsolete. Precious supplies and employee labour is not wasted on goods that may never make it out of the warehouse. Just-in-time delivery of materials and parts is applied to significantly reduce “work in process” which is a direct result of overproduction and waiting. Excess inventory increases lead times, consumes productive floor space, delays the identification of problems, and inhibits communication. By attaining a seamless flow between work centers, Chinese manufacturers have been able to improve customer service and slash inventories and their associated costs.

Outbound Logistics

Outbound logistics concerns the packaging and storage of products/services, and the process of delivering the products/services to the customers.

A value system may also include the value chain of firm’s suppliers, the firm distribution channels and the firm’s buyers capturing the value generated. Along the chain is the new approach taken by many management strategies, for example a manufacturer might require its parts suppliers to be located nearby it assembly plant to minimize the cost of transportation. Slideshare by joe Chernov, Eloqua

Supplier Partnerships

In common with lean thinking (Womack & Jones, 1996), partnership aims at waste reduction. Purchasing and Supply waste include multiple quotes, order acknowledgement, remittance advices, invoices, counting, repackaging, checking returns, expediting, double handling and storage.

For lean manufacturing to work effectively and for both parties to benefit, first, second and third tier suppliers must participate on an equal footing with OEM operations to optimize the product flow, and develop supplier partnership and associations through proper co-operations than confrontation. In partnership, contracts should have longer term/condition in order to give the supplier confidence and the motivation to invest and improve. One strategy adopted by the Chinese manufacturing outfits to ensure that the partnership works, is by engaging few or single suppliers per part resulting in a few good trusted suppliers who supply a wide range of parts.

Maintaining and Improving Equipment

To help achieve high equipment effectiveness is the use of preventive maintenance programmed. Effective productive maintenance (PM) requires that operators take responsibility for proper equipment operation, daily cleaning, and monitoring and basic equipment upkeep. Total Productive Maintenance seeks to involve workers in all departments and levels, from the plant-floor to senior executives, to ensure effective equipment operation. Autonomous maintenance, a key aspect of TPM, trains and focuses workers to take care of the equipment and machines with which they work.

One aim of Total Productive Management (TPM) is zero breakdowns, the virtual elimination of equipment malfunctioning and equipment-related sources of production defects. TPM focuses on preventing breakdowns (preventive maintenance), “mistake-proofing” equipment (or poka-yoke) to eliminate equipment malfunctions and product defects, making maintenance easier (corrective maintenance), designing and installing equipment that needs little or no maintenance (maintenance prevention), and quickly repairing equipment after breakdowns occur (breakdown maintenance).

Quality: The quality system of lean manufacturing focuses on ‘building-in quality rather than ‘inspecting-in’ quality. Workers check the conformance standards throughout the production process. They also thoroughly understand and use standardized