Example Cases

Valuable lessons can be learned from the following organisations:

Boeing Co.'s Mesa site

Lean Manufacturing improves cycle rates significantly

The manufacture of Boeing's Apache Longbow helicopters had hit a roadblock. Cycle times and costs were increasing as each new aircraft took longer to build than the previous one. Measurements were taken of every aspect of production which led to new lean manufacturing procedures being put into place. The lean production lines helped to reduce costs, eliminate waste, and to improve cycle times. The following metrics had been recorded since implementing lean methodologies:

• On-time delivery of 100%

• Overall production hours per aircraft reduced more than 48%

• Manufacturing cycle time reduced more than 40%

• Internal defects reduced more than 58 %

• Cost of rework, repair, and scrap declined more than 61%

• Lost workday rate decreased by 76%

• Boeing's achievements were recognised with a Shingo manufacturing prize in 2005 [12] 

Ducati Italy

Lean methodologies applied to the supply chain

Lean manufacturing principles enabled Ducati to significantly improve its assembly plant operations. The aim was to eliminate all non-value adding activities, eliminate waste, and improve quality, all without any major new investments. Non-core activities were outsourced. Ducati's main efforts were focussed on assembly and R&D. Production costs were reduced by 25%, throughput time was cut by 50%, and build quality improved by 70%. However since only 8% of the costs associated with Ducati's final products came from manufacturing stages it was decided to also apply lean methodologies to Ducati's supply chain. An integration programme was introduced which involved Ducati personnel and its suppliers’ staff working together in teams. By interconnecting its suppliers via the Internet, production planning, parts price lists, invoices, quality reports were able to be shared, and this accelerated the flow of information and improved the productivity of the whole manufacturing process.[13] 

Spuhl AG, Switzerland

Lean leads to significant delivery time reductions

Spuhl implemented an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to streamline its order taking, machining and assembly processes. Automated sales engineering began with a rules-based configuration solution and followed through to detailed order capture, production, and shipping. Flexible capacity policies facilitated a totally demand driven manufacturing system which led to the reduction of raw materials, work in progress inventories, and cycle times. Customer orders via the configurator were used to directly tool the machines in Spuhl's lean, pull-driven production work centres. Work orders, bill of material data, and technical publishing information were also generated. At the end of the process a 3D exploded drawing was copied onto the Internet where individual customers could access as-built machine information, Web-based spares ordering facilities were also provided. Overall benefits included:

Toyota Motor Corp

Lean design adaptation leads to greater productivity

The Toyota Product Development System (TPDS) is a lean adaptation system used for engineering design work which includes the following key features:

Thomas & Betts, Athens Plant

Lean manufacturing makes company more competitive

Value stream studies for T&B's products revealed wasted time, material, and effort and future-state mapping then led to actions for removing the waste. This enabled the plant to grow progressively leaner. T&B's achievements (since 2001) were reported as follows:

T&B believed that its lean culture made it competitive with any plant around the world. 

Goodwill Industries U.S.

Value Stream Mapping leads to large improvements

Goodwill, an organisation that collected and recycled used clothing wanted to improve its operations to be able to offer more employment opportunities to the handicapped persons it used in many of the operations. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) was carried out to test the feasibility of Goodwill's proposals. A current state diagram was prepared to outline the existing operations and cycle times were plotted for each stage involved. The ratio of the value added to non value added time in the overall process was found to be 0.005 %. A future state map was prepared by a lean team which came up with improvements related to: