Introduction to Lean Manufacturing

by Placer Inspection Medical devices contract manufacturer

Waste?

A primary topic of concern for every business and enterprise.

Waste is the activity, process or thing that is no quintessential use, neither for the business nor for the customers. It is the value of the product that forms the foundation of the products and the actions that are developed and taken inside a manufacturing and production unit. With minimum to no value of the product for the customer is like working hard on building a house but not living in it. A complete and utter WASTE!

Placer Inspection is the leading and precision oriented Design Verification San Francisco County providers and the client-centric contract manufacturers that undertakes massive contracts of electronics, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment from private parties and medical centers and institutions made under the strict regulations and guidelines of the CFR 21 Part 820.30 QSR, ISO-13485, 93/42/EEC-Medical Device Regulation including other International Regulatory Bodies requirements. This best sync with the international laws helps us offer our clients with product realization; from concept to Design Input, Design Output, Design Verification/Validation, Clinical Studies, and Packaging engineering, Product Transfer, Product Launch and Regulatory Readiness.

The vastness of the projects undertaken and the mind-boggling investment involved leave absolutely next to zero scopes for wastage.

Going by the statistics evaluated from the research conducted by the Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC), approximately 60% of the production activities that are carried out vivaciously in a typical manufacturing and operation units are waste, i.e., they do not add any value from the customer’s perspective.

First introduced by the Toyota Production System as an integrated socio-technical approach, Lean manufacturing is a process that deeply focuses and targeted to minimize waste within the manufacturing operations while significantly and remarkably maximizing productivity.

Let’s understand Lean Manufacturing in Detail

· The key fact that circumnavigates around the idea of lean manufacturing is setting up guidelines and work ethos and acting strongly on them to eliminate or minimize waste from the manufacturing process.

· It is a perfectly and clearly laid out document documenting techniques and activities for running or efficiently carrying out manufacturing or service operation.

· Though these techniques and activities differ exponentially from the application and tasks at hand, but to be practical they all have the same underlying approach i.e. the complete and partial wipeout of all the non-value-adding activities and operations from the business.

What Types of non-value-adding activities add up to be regarded as a waste?

Ø Overproduction of the product that leads to necessary storage costs

Ø The transition time from one operation to another. How much lag time is presently there between your manufacturing steps?

Ø Are you buying unnecessary amounts of raw material that need storage space before they are ready to be used?

Ø Are you stuck with the same mode of transporting material and stock or do you have alternatives to speed up your process?

Ø Does one task take too many revisions to be qualified as perfect?

The Design engineer Alameda County of Placer Inspection while carrying out their Design Verification San Francisco County and Reverse Engineering California strictly follow the techniques of lean manufacturing to curb any sort of wastage and non-value-adding activity.