Manufacturing and Job Shop

Lean Manufacturing Movement

Written by Nancy Phillippi | Jul 20, 2016 5:00:00 AM

If you’re a manufacturer in the MRO sector or job shop, you can cut down on wasted costs and create a lean manufacturing environment by adopting lean manufacturing tools and principles.  Your company can begin this process by making small, but high level, changes that will make your company more productive. In this blog we will be discussing the lean concept of Movement.

Movement

Similar to transportation, motion is concerned with the unnecessary movement of the product assemblers, both machines and human workers. How could this be costing you money? Time is money, and anywhere you can save time, you have the opportunity to increase productivity. In addition, repetitive and/or unnecessary motions can cause muscle strains and other medical problems for employees and progressive “wear and tear” for machinery; it also guarantees faster burn-out for workers. The goal is to make the manufacturing process as simple as possible for both man and machine while increasing productivity.

Steps to take:

  1. Talk to your production manager about plant issues and problems, as well as better opportunities for better process work flows and kitting items together.  Other suggestions to look for to shave time off your operations include:
  2. Always have safety meetings and discuss any ‘movement’ issues your workers may be experiencing at the present time.
  3. Even having your customer service or sales team running around looking for inventory is a time waster. Again, the right and trusted processes within an ERP solution will stop the madness. 

T. Early, a blogger and Quality and Lean Management Professional, cites that these changes will as a whole cost you nothing other than the time of your team, but will result in efficiency gains in the order of 10% to 30% in most cases as well as making your work area safer by preventing accidents.

Dynamics AX can also aid in your lean endeavors by:

  • Modeling manufacturing and logistics processes as production flows
  • Using kanbans to signal demand requirements
  • Monitoring and maintaining Kanban jobs by using the Kanban boards

Be on the look out for a new ebook that will give an in depth look on lean manufacturing and Dynamics AX, and IoT, that we plan on releasing in the next few months.

Clients First operates both nationally and internationally.  Our AX consultants headquartered in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas are committed to making your work life easier through implementing ERP and better business processes. We are Microsoft Gold Certified Partners who know that there is no such thing as a “universal” ERP solution as there is no such thing as a "universal" manufacturer. Dynamics AX must be tailored to your company’s needs, organizational culture, staff capabilities, and project’s characteristics. Call us at 800.331.8382 so we can put your company first, too. Or, email us by clicking on the links above.
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