Questions: Questions about …

Question: What is Lean Production or Lean Manufacturing?

Answer: Lean production or Lean Manufacturing is a management philosophy focusing on reduction of the seven wastes.

• Over-production
• Processing
• Transportation
• Waiting time
• Inventory
• Motion
• Scrap in manufactured products or any type of business.

By eliminating waste (muda *), quality is improved, production time and costs are reduced.To solve the problem of waste, Lean Manufacturing has several “tools” at its disposal. These include constant process analysis (kaizen), “pull” production (by means of kanban) and mistake-proofing (poka-yoke).

Question on Types of waste
Toyota defined seven categories or types of waste.

1. Overproduction (making more than what is needed, or making it earlier than needed)
2. Transportation (moving products farther than is minimally required)
3. Waiting (products waiting on the next production step, or people waiting for work to do)
4. Inventory (having more inventory than is minimally required)
5. Motion (people moving or walking more than minimally required)
6. Processing itself
7. Defects (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing defects)

These terms are important to understand lean manufacturing.

*Muda means Waste in Japanese and very important to understand Lean Production Methodology

Question: What is Production Planning?

Manufacturing planning and control entails the acquisition and allocation of limited resources to production activities so as to satisfy customer demand over a specified time horizon. As such, planning and control problems are inherently optimization problems, where the objective is to develop a plan that meets demand at minimum cost or that fills the demand that maximizes profit. The underlying optimization problem will vary due to differences in the manufacturing and market context. This chapter provides a framework for discrete-parts manufacturing planning and control and provides an overview of applicable model formulations.