Traditionally
operated garment industries are facing problems like low productivity, longer
production lead time, high rework and rejection, poor line balancing, low
flexibility of style changeover etc. These problems were addressed in this
study by the implementation of lean tools like cellular manufacturing, single
piece flow, work standardization, just in time production etc.
After
implementation of lean tools, results observed were highly encouraging. Some of
the key benefits entail production cycle time decreased by 8%, number of
operators required to produce equal amount of garment is decreased by 14%,
rework level reduced by 80%, production lead time comes down to one hour from
two days, work in progress inventory stays at a maximum of 100 pieces from
around 500 to 1500 pieces. Apart from these tangible benefits operator
multi-skilling as well as the flexibility of style changeover has been
improved.
1.1 History of
Lean
During II world
war, the economic condition of Japan was heavily destroyed. Due to this there
was scarcity of fund resulting in limiting access to corporate finance. In this
situation, neither Toyota was able to set up a mass production system like
their American counterparts, nor it was possible to layoff the employees to
reduce their cost due to legislation. Anyhow Toyota had to devise a new system
for reducing costs to sustain in the market. So they decided to produce a small
batch of products which would reduce inventories; it means they would need less
capital to produce the same product.
But this is
obstructed by the practical difficulty of changing tools and production lines
frequently. To cope with this problem they started making multipurpose tooling
systems in their machines and trained their employees in changeover time reduction
methods. At the same time, Toyota realized that investing in people is more
important than investing in bigger size machinery and continues employee
training throughout the organization. This motivates all employees and they are
more open to the improvement process and everyone started giving their input to
the company.
In this way,
short production runs started by Toyota became a benefit rather than a burden,
as it was able to respond much more rapidly to changes in demand by quickly
switching production from one model to another (Drew, Blair and Stefan, 2004,
p. 5-6). Toyota didn’t depend on the economies of scale production like
American companies. It rather developed a culture, organization and operating
system that relentlessly pursued the elimination of waste, variability and
inflexibility. To achieve this, it focused its operating system on responding
to demand and nothing else. This in turn means it has to be flexible;
when there are changes in demand, the operating system is a stable workforce that
is required to be much more skilled and much more flexible than those in most
mass production systems. Over time, all these elements were consolidated into a
new approach to operations that formed the basis of lean or Toyota Production
System.
1.2 Definition
of Lean
The popular
definition of Lean Manufacturing and the Toyota Production System usually
consists of the following (Wilson, 2009, p. 29-30).
1. It is a
comprehensive set of techniques which when combined allows you to reduce and
eliminate the wastes. This will make the company leaner, more flexible and more
responsive by reducing waste.
2. Lean is the
systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste through continuous
improvement by flowing the product or service at the pull of your customer in
pursuit of perfection (Nash, Poling and Ward, 2006, p. 17)
According to
(Drew et al., 2004, p 25) the lean operating system consists of the following:
· A lean
operating system follows certain principles to deliver value to the customer
while minimizing all forms of loss.
· Each value
stream within the operating system must be optimized individually from end to
end.
· Lean tools
and techniques are applied selectively to eliminate the three sources of loss:
waste, variability and inflexibility.
Thus the
organization who wants to implement lean should have strong customer
focus,should be willing to remove wastes from the processes they operate on
daily basis and should have the motivation of growth and survival.
1.3 Objective
of Lean
· To meet
customer demand on time by eliminating non value added work from the process
· To minimize
the work in process inventory
· To create
flexibility of style changeover
· To reduce
rework percentage
· To create a
pool of multi-skilled operators who can respond quickly for changing style
1.4 Lean
Principles
The major five
principles of Lean are as follows (Burton T. and Boeder, 2003, p. 122):
Principle 1:
Accurately specify value from customer perspective for both products and
services.
Principle 2:
Identify the value stream for products and services and remove non-value adding
waste along the value stream.
Principle 3:
Make the product and services flow without interruption across the value
stream.
Principle 4:
Authorize production of products and services based on the pull by the
customer.
Principle 5:
Strive for perfection by constantly removing layers of waste.
