Unit 18: Lean and Quality

LO1: Understand lean manufacturing

Auditing for lean principles

Instructions and answers for tutors

These instructions should accompany the OCR learner resource activity which supports Cambridge Technicals in Engineering Level 3.

Activity 1

Learners carry out create an audit of a manufacturing or production facility to identify where the seven ‘wastes’ occurs in the process. Refer to the Appendix for the definitions of the seven wastes and the table below can be used to compile the notes. To complete this, learners should partake in either a suitable employer site visit or, if this isn’t available, use a centre-based activity such as the production of a component using in-house machinery or the analysis of a process within the institutions environment (e.g. reprographics or food preparation).

Learners should use their audit checklist to identify where the wastes occur and what impact this has on the production process.

Production process:
Area of production / Transportation / Inventory / Motion / Waiting / Overprocessing / Overproduction / Defects

Activity 2

Learners should then review where any of the seven lean wastes were observed and propose realistic modifications to the processes that would result in improvements to productivity.

Unit 18: Lean and Quality

LO1: Understand lean manufacturing

Auditing for lean principles

Learner activity sheet

Activity 1

Carry out create an audit of a manufacturing or production facility to identify where the seven wastes occurs in the process. Refer to Appendix 1 for the definitions of the seven wastes and use the table below to compile your notes. You should partake in either a suitable employer site visit or, if this isn’t available, use a centre-based activity such as the production of a component using in-house machinery or the analysis of a process within the institutions environment (e.g. reprographics or food preparation).

Use your audit checklist to identify where the wastes occur and what impact this has on the production process.

Production process:
Area of production / Transportation / Inventory / Motion / Waiting / Overprocessing / Overproduction / Defects

Activity 2

Review where any of the seven lean wastes were observed and propose realistic modifications to the processes that would result in improvements to productivity.

Appendix 1

Mura, Muda, Muri

TIMWOOD

The elimination of waste is the key to improving efficiency within any business. The process of achieving this can be focused within three categories;Muda, Muri and Mura.

Muda, in English means ‘waste’.This represents the seven wastes, targeted for removal discussed above.

The second category is Muri. This means ‘overburden’, and represents processes, machinery or people that are ‘overburdened’ due to too much demand or inefficient processes. To avoid overburden, production must be evenly distributed across all stages of the process.

The third category is Mura. This means ‘unevenness’. This is where peaks in production or irregularities in process can have a major impact on particular machines, personnel or stages of production. The aim is to balance demand so no particular station ever suffers irregularities or is over or under capacity.

The seven lean wastes

There are seven lean wastes. These are the non-value adding wastes that are targeted for removal during the mapping of the value stream. They can be remembered through the acronym TIMWOOD: Transportation, Inventory, Movement, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, Defects.

Some companies refer to the 8th waste: Skills –this is the underuse of employee’s capabilities. The acronym subsequently becomes TIMWOODS:

Transportation

  • Moving Work In Progress, (WIP) parts or materials between processes.
  • Moving of parts, products, information or materials does not add value.

Inventory

  • Excess raw material, WIP or stock.Inventory hides problems and costs money.
  • There is too much ‘stuff’ in the company that the customer doesn’t need right now.

Motion

  • Any motion employees have to make that is not adding value to the product e.g. looking for parts or tools.Walking is waste.
  • Any motion not necessary to complete a task.

Waiting

  • Anytime where workers have to wait for things e.g. parts arriving from a previous process, shortage of stock, machine break downs or maintenance.
  • Time lost when material, information or people are not ready when needed.

Overproduction

  • Producing items in greater quantities than the customer requires.
  • This produces other wastes such as over staffing, storage and transportation costs due to excess inventory.
  • Producing too much or producing before it is needed.

Overprocessing

  • Taking excessive or unneeded steps to produce a part e.g. producing parts to a higher quality than the customer needs, painting parts when not needed.
  • Efforts that create no value from a customer’s viewpoint.

Defects

  • Production of components or products that are wrong or have problems.Parts that do not meet the quality specification.
  • Work that contains errors, rework and mistakes.

Skills

  • The waste of human creativity.
  • Losing time, ideas, skills, improvements and learning opportunities by not engaging with or listening to employees.

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