Welcome to Lean Manufacturing Systems Review

Lean Manufacturing Systems Review provides valuable links and information about the latest in software development news.

Reducing Scrap and Manufacturing Green


Scrap reductions are always worth investing in if there is a good return on investment (ROI) available. Now more than ever in the age of environmental conservation and renewal, it pays to look at the scrap that a process is creating and create reductions if possible. One good strategy that is often overlooked is that of monitoring not only the cause of the scrap as is common in most organizations but also the corrective actions that are being implemented in relationship to the scrap.

Most scrap systems include some type of Pareto driven charting and reporting but all too often the corrective actions to reduce the scrap are overlooked in these shop floor reporting platforms. We work with Tuppas software at times when investigating articles for our site and they incorporate corrective actions into their platforms for many of their customers.

Tuppas is a company that builds inexpensive tailored solutions for manufacturing plants. They sell both a scrap reporting module and a defect tracking module. The scrap system is often equipped with a corrective actions collection of data entry screens which allow the manufacturer to not only drill into the scrap problems that are occurring in the plant but also to see what the team on the floor is doing to reduce the occurrence of the problems.

If you’re interested in more information on scrap reporting you might want to check out the mes software site. I like to read the articles they post on shop floor reporting systems and I think you might enjoy them as well.








What is Lean Six Sigma?


Improving quality and efficiency simultaneously is an extreme challenge for most manufacturers. The two issues are so intertwined that advancing one usually leads to problems with the other. To manage make progress with both, two methodologies have emerged and proven to be successful, Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. “Lean” is focused on increasing efficiency by following the Lean principles to eliminate scrap. Six Sigma improves production yields by controlling the process while reducing defects by performing a problem solving approach part of which is tracking the effectiveness of corrective actions.

Businesses that are ahead of the pack in performance and quality control started these practices. Due to their success, other companies have followed suit by implementing Six Sigma or a Lean system. But only using one of these methodologies can lead to problems. Each system can improve a manufacturing environment, but only together do these tools yield the power to improve a process without detrimental side effects. Because of this, many manufacturers are combining them to increase the consistency of their processes, reduce waste and improve overall equipment effectiveness or OEE.

So how does a company become Lean? Lean manufacturing is centered around reducing waste. Many forms of waste exist, waste does not only mean scrapped products. On example is JIT (Just-In-Time) inventory software that can reduce excessive warehouse space needed to store raw material and finished goods. Preventative Maintenance (PM or CMMS) Software ensures that maintenance is being performed on your equipment on a routine basis so that equipment breaks less often reducing downtime and operating costs. Downtime Software used in conjunction with CMMS make visible which machines require attention. Advanced CMMS suggests when supervisors should purchase replacement machines vs when to simply replace a part of a machine to improve efficiency.

Six Sigma and Lean applications that are tailored to company-specific product flows work out the best. Inflexible Lean Six Sigma systems can not be changed, so they are often difficult to use and usually fail upon implementation due to the unique business situations many manufacturers have. “Out-of-the-box” software can not flag the defect root causes necessary to attack the symptoms at the core. To reflect continuous improve efforts within a system, one must have an agile application. Agile systems conform to unique business situations, resulting in a system that is user-friendly that also highlights KPI (key performance indicators) for executives. The benefits of tailored systems are being recognized with concepts that incorporate company-specific elements such as Lean Six Sigma.








Using the team on the floor to implement “Lean”


Some of the best lean manufacturing implementations include the employees on the shop floor as active participants who are empowered to improve the process. These systems provide the shop floor employees with active real time interfaces that report on problems in the process and provide a means to record corrective actions that lead to improvements in productivity, downtime management and operational efficiency.

In contrast to systems that once only provided information to plant production managers many lean implementations are beginning to offer simple reporting and corrective actions reporting interfaces designed to provide feedback to the team on the floor. After all, they usually are the group who are really in a position to make a difference. These systems usually provide information in the form of reports, charts and graphs in a simple format by work center. The systems report on downtime, scrap, and production rates. Many systems also provide information on OEE or Overall Equipment Effectiveness. OEE is a measure of downtime, defects and production efficiency in relationship to one another.

Lean manufacturing and lean six sigma based systems benefit from functionality that allows simple improvements can be implemented by team members on the floor. Improvements in OEE, downtime and defect tracking can be achieved by giving the right reporting tools to your employees. Simple pareto charts that allow your team to analyze the top reasons for downtime on a given machine can be beneficial. When coupled with trending on a specific issue and reporting on the corrective actions that relate to the issue it’s possible to see how your team’s actions are correcting or aggravating the problem.

There are several OEE vendors that sell Lean OEE tools. Tuppas software is a good vendor. They specialize in tailored systems so they’re good at creating reporting systems that adapt to the culture of the plant.