Operations Management

Lean Synchronization
Dr Daniel Chicksand
Andrew Parker
Senior Lecturer of Operations and
Supply Management

Room 265 ABS

 Week 8- Content

• What are lean operations?

• The elimination of waste

Reading & learning
1. What is Lean?
2. What is Lean Synchronization?
Lean operations
synchronization or JIT
‘The key principle of lean operations is relatively
straightforward to understand, it means moving towards
the elimination of all waste in order to develop an
operation that is faster, more dependable, produces
higher quality products and services and, above all,
operates at low cost’.

‘The focus of lean synchronization is to achieve a flow of

products or services that delivers exactly what the
customer wants, in exact quantities, exactly when
needed, exactly where required and at the lowest
possible cost’. (Slack et.al, 2021.p382)
The elimination of Waste…

Do we have any “lean practitioners” here?

Lean operations

So… From an OM perspective, to achieve

“Lean Synchronisation”, what do we need to
have in place?

Also… What should we not have?

Where has lean come from and why is it important?
Taiichi Ohno - Toyota

Philosophy Techniques

Womack, Jones and Roos, 1990

Common Lean perceptions

 Mismanagement by stress
 Cost-focused waste removal
 Japanese management practice
 Fad overtaken by six sigma
Toyota – Production vs. GM
GM Framingham Toyota Takaoka

Assembly time per 31 16

car (hours)

Assembly defects 135 45

per 100 cars

Assembly space per 8.1 4.8

car

Inventory 2 weeks 2 hours

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAUXHJBB5CM
JIT at Toyota: Short youtube video
Identify end user value across value stream

Lean as philosophy
Involve everyone
Continuous
Eliminate waste
Improvement

Lean as set of
techniques
Basic working practices
Design for manufacture Lean as method of
planning and control
Small simple machines
Layout and flow Pull scheduling
TPM Kanban control
Set-up reduction Leveled scheduling
Visibility
Lean supply Mixed modeling
Lean operations
Benefits of lean: JIT material flow
Traditional approach: Buffers separate each stage.

Scheduling & movement information from the operations planning and control system

buffer buffer
inventory inventory
stage A stage B stage C
deliveries deliveries deliveries deliveries

Lean Sync / JIT approach: Deliveries are made on demand

Information / orders Information / orders

stage A stage B stage C

deliveries deliveries
The river and rocks analogy

WIP, Defective deliveries,

downtime, unstable demand,
rework, inaccurate quantities, off-
standards, untrained operators,
problems
poor floor layout and scrap.

Reduce the level of waste (water) to reveal the operation’s problems

problems

What are operation’s problems?

Lean operations
Different views on capacity utilisation
• One of the purported downsides of lean synchronisation is that it comes at the cost of capacity utilisation

Lean focus on producing

approach only when needed
Traditional
approach
focus on high
capacity utilisation fewer stoppages
lower capacity
utilisation, but low inventory so
more stoppages
because of problems are
problems exposed and
more production solved
at each stage high inventory
means less chance no surplus
of problems being production goes
exposed and solved into inventory
extra production
goes into inventory
because of continuing
stoppages at stages
Involve everyone

‘Everyone’ includes customers

Multi-skill to maintain dependability,

Gemba: Go look see
functional flexibility (cross training)

Devolved decision making, empowerment

Jidoka = humanising the interfaces between the operator and machine. Operationalised by means
of fail-safeing (Machine Jidoka), line stopping authority (Human Jidoka) and visual control of
process standards.
Continuous improvement

 Kaizen: fundamental principle -

participation in improving process
Organic (teams responsible for daily
work improvements) and project based
(special improvement teams)
improvements

 Standardize and document procedures

(5S) Mouse nest found on policeman's filthy desk
Sort (remove unwanted/unused Exterminators called in to deal with an infestation at
material to storage) a police station found a mouse nest on a messy desk.
Published: 9:21AM GMT 05 Jan 2010
Set in order
Shine
Standardise
Sustain (adhere, improve, promote
standards)
Lean operations - The 5S’s

➢ Sort (Seiri) Eliminate what is not needed and keep what is

needed.

➢ Straighten (Seiton) Position things in such a way that they

can be easily reached whenever they are needed.

➢ Shine (Seiso) Keep things clean and tidy; no refuse or dirt in

the work area.

➢ Standardize (Seiketsu) Maintain cleanliness and order -

perpetual neatness

➢ Sustain (Shitsuke) Develop a commitment and pride in

keeping to standards.
2. The elimination of waste
Muda, mura, muri
Muda, mura, and muri are Japanese words conveying three causes
of waste
❑Muda – are activities in a process that are wasteful because
they do not add value to the operation or the customer.

❑Mura – means ‘lack of consistency’ or unevenness that

results in periodic overloading of staff or equipment.
❑Muri – means absurd or unreasonable. It is based on the idea
that unnecessary or unreasonable requirements put on a
process will result in poor outcomes.
Critical consideration: These three causes of waste are related.
Inconsistent processes (mura) leads to overburdening resources
(muri) which causes non value adding activities (muda).
 Muda (waste)
Waste
Eliminating waste (muda, mura & muri) Mura (Uneven/not level)
Muri (overburden)
Activities that consume time, resources and space, but do not contribute to
satisfying customer needs

Over-production

Waiting time

Transport
Process

Inventory
Motion

Defectives
Identifying and Eliminating waste (muda, mura & muri)
in a typical service operation.

Breakout activity: 30 mins

• Take a look at the canvas spreadsheet. “My flight journey record”.

• This contains a summary of activities undertaken in respect of a flight.

• Tasks:
1) Analyse the journey in terms of value-added time (actually going
somewhere) and non-value added time (time spent queuing etc)

2) Visit the websites of two / three airlines and examine their premium
class services to look for ideas that can reduce the non-value added
time for customers who are willing to pay the premium.

• In your own time: Next time you go on a journey be an Ops geek

and time each part of the journey an perform a similar analysis.
Some daily examples…
Activity Waste Category
➢ Making extra copies just in case Over Production
➢ Document movement between departments Transport
➢ Supervisory approval delays Waiting
➢ Files waiting to be worked on Inventory
➢ Multiple calls to the customer for same issue Over Production
➢ Incorrect Customer Address Defect
➢ Cupboard full of office supplies Inventory
➢ Capturing additional fields in the system Over processing
➢ Running for photocopier to other floor on building Motion
➢ Incorrect Processing of Salary Defect
➢ Customer on hold Waiting
➢ Forms moving different locations Transport
 The seven types of waste
Contribute to four barriers to
operations achieving lean
synchronization

Waste from irregular flow, waste from inexact supply, waste from inflexible
response, and waste from variability

1. Eliminating waste through streamlined flow i.e. value

stream mapping (A)
2. Eliminating waste through matching supply and demand exactly i.e.
JIT & Kanbans (B)
3. Eliminating waste through flexible processes i.e. reducing changeover
times (C)
4. Eliminating waste through minimizing variability i.e. Levelled
scheduling (heijunka) & delivering more often (D)
 Kanban example

Toyota have used this method for >80 years. Other than technology vs manual
Cards, the basic methodology has not changed
3. Elimination of waste through streamlined flow (A)
Value stream mapping

‘Value stream’ mapping focuses on value-adding activities and

distinguishes between value-adding and non-value-adding activities. It is
similar to process mapping but different in four ways:

➢It uses a broader range of information than most process maps

➢It is usually at a higher level (5-10 activities) than most process maps

➢It often has a wider scope, frequently spanning the whole supply
chain

➢It can be used to identify where to focus future improvement activities

Value Stream Map for an industrial air
conditioning installation service
Aircraft maintenance procedures - waste reduction
Start / Finish Start / Finish

Wait for aircraft Perform preparatory

work

Before –
•Maintenance staff follow the steps as
detailed in the technical documentation
•The overall sequence of tasks is not
optimized
•Preparation work and set-ups included
as part of the task
After –
•The overall sequence of tasks is defined
and allocated to minimise non-value-added
• Preparation work and set-ups may be
done ahead of time to minimise aircraft
contact time
•Increased productivity and reduced aircraft
waiting time
Accident and Emergency process before lean

84 steps
63 non-value steps
21 value-added steps
Redesigned Lean Process
You can go back and create a VSM for the flight
journey if you want to…
Use small-scale simple process technology
Conventional Western approach is to purchase large machines to
get “economies of scale”.
These often have long, complex set-ups, and make big batches
quickly creating “waste”.
Using several small machines rather than one large one allows
simultaneous processing, is more robust and is more flexible.....

Inventory
levels

Time
4. Eliminate waste through matching supply and
demand exactly (B)
Push and pull planning/control....
Push planning and control
FORECAST
Operations planning and control system
Instructions on what
to make and where to
send it

WORK WORK WORK WORK DEMAND

CENTRE CENTRE CENTRE CENTRE

Pull planning and control

REQUEST REQUEST REQUEST REQUEST

WORK WORK WORK WORK DEMAND

CENTRE CENTRE CENTRE CENTRE

DELIVERY DELIVERY DELIVERY DELIVERY

Kanbans are used to ‘pull’ items through processes

Simple Bottleneck / Lean Sync exercise
Every process will have a bottleneck stage somewhere.

Imagine this simple 3-stage process below….

A B C

10 8 11
parts/hour parts/hour parts/hour
Bottleneck exercise:

Question 1.

What is the output per hour of this 3 stage production process?

A B C
?
10 8 11
parts/hour parts/hour parts/hour
Question 2:

a) After 10 hours production, how much Work in progress inventory (WIP) will
we have and b) where will it be?

A B C

10 8 11
parts/hour parts/hour parts/hour
Question 3:

Process C drops to 80% “Yield” (It develops a quality problem:

Only 80% of the inputs to this stage are transformed into good
quality outputs)

A B C. 80% yield

10 8 11
parts/hour parts/hour parts/hour

What is the process output now?

Question 4:

• What would you do to “Lean / Improve” this process?

• What is the very first thing you need to understand about

this process, before you set out to improve it?

A B C. 80% yield

10 8 11
parts/hour parts/hour parts/hour
 A B C. 80% yield

10 8 11
parts/hour parts/hour parts/hour

In this simple exercise, we have touched on Process design, flow,

Capacity, Forecasting, Inventory, Quality, Lean and Improvement.

Hopefully you can get a feel for how they are interdependent on
and interrelated with each other.
4. Elimination of waste through flexible processes (C)
Reducing changeover times
Changeover time reduction can be achieved by a variety of methods such as the
following.

Measure and analyse changeover activities –

Convert internal to external activities –

➢Pre-prepare activities or equipment instead of having to do it
during changeover periods.
➢Make the changeover process intrinsically flexible and capable of
performing all required activities without any delay.
➢Speed up any required changes of equipment, information or staff
for example by using simple devices.

Practice changeover routines – not surprisingly, the constant

practice of changeover routines and the associated learning curve
effect tends to reduce changeover times.
Reducing changeover times
The Extreme. Fastest F1 tyre change. 1.88 – 1.92 seconds

www.F1.com. Accessed 15/1119

Practice changeover routines – not surprisingly, the constant

practice of changeover routines and the associated learning curve
effect tends to reduce changeover times.
4. Elimination of waste through minimizing
variability (D)
Lean supply
Delivering smaller quantities
often

Lean partnership purchasing

and supplier relations, not
conflicting

Advantage: reduced inventory Drawbacks

cost of placing order Need ongoing and frequent supply
price discount costs (increases vulnerability)
working capital costs Often close geographical supplier
storage and obsolescence costs
Lean supply Delivering smaller quantities often

Andrew’s experience:
Deliveries to Toyota. 8 small trucks with 25 products each, daily.
Deliveries to Ford, GM, Rover. One large truck with 1000 products, weekly.
Common causes of lean failure

(Lack of) Management support

Using profit to gauge plant performance
Focusing on results, not processes
Using machine utilization as measures of management
performance
Unwillingness to empower employees
Lack of lean belief, that change required to survive.
Lean implementation

 Four choices
Philosophy – spread culture first, then techniques follow
Process – focused where first value stream and then make
necessary changes
People – implement through staff and patient buy-in of Lean
Problem solve – implement through innovation events

 Suggestion:
Gemba: Go, look, see. With the right people.
Value stream
Problem solve to improve identified target areas to get
involvement and buy-in
Let culture follow naturally
Lean Summary:
58
St Bridget’s: Case Analysis

1. What benefits did St Bridget’s get from adopting first a continuous

improvement, then a lean, approach?
2. Do you think that Pär Solberg is right in thinking that there is a limit to
how far a hospital can go in adopting lean ideas?
3. On the St Bridget’s website there are several references to its ‘Quality
Care’ programme, but non to its lean initiatives, even though lean is
regarded as important by most clinicians and administrators in the
hospital. Why do you think this might be?
4. Denize cannot see the benefits of Fredrik’s proposal. What do you
think they might be?
5. Are any benefits of scrapping the waiting room in the clinic worth the
underutilisation of the four consulting rooms that Fredrik envisages?

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