Wireless Is More Than Cell Phones <a href="printing-in-china.com">business card printing</a> <a href="printing-in-china.com/box-printing/">custom packaging</a> by George J. Whalen In the tough economy since November 2000, smart businesses, including some who use digital printing inside their manufacturing processes, are discovering the lean manufacturing philosophy -- that employees might be better motivated; that workflows could be re-engineered; that processes and procedures all may be improved making more appeal-adding - and that productivity and profitability can jump as a result. This article explains key theory points and offers a practical example of that the business using digital printing has benefitted from the committment to being lean and mean. Lean principles, once incorporated in the workplace, may similarly aid your company to outlive and grow inside the future. Why Be Lean? In today's manufacturing, customers determine your order quantities and delivery times. The events of economic order quantity are long gone. Customers expect high-quality products and fast response to their needs, all with a affordable. To meet those demands, rapid and price-effective job changeover can be an essential feature associated with a manufacturing cycle. Using more labor, time or expense compared to the barebone minimum work requires could be suicidal in a very highly competitive, price-sensitive economy. Correctly analyzing current job changeover practices and streamlining them can help to save some time to costs, contributing to productivity and profit. When you reduce inventory, expand jobs and responsibilities, have employees participate on multi-functional work teams, problem-solve at the source, benchmark, create and keep relationships with customers, then, you is going to be practicing some of the the lean philosophy is focused on. If you employ digital printing inside your business, thinking lean and applying its principles to your workflow will almost surely bring you benefits.Of course, at will digital printing is, by nature, a fast-changeover manufacturing process. But, other steps that surround it typically usually are not. If you'll find binding, trimming, collating, inserting or manual handling steps to get performed for the product, sluggish process changeover of those from job to a different can slow overall production with a crawl. By looking at the overall process of each one new job, analyzing the bottlenecks and re-engineering the workflow, some time to costs can be saved, meeting the client's schedule and cost expectations. Even more, by enhancing the flexibility of using different combinations of people stages in any job, lean serious amounts of labor savings may be built right into the workflow, benefitting all future jobs. The result from the commitment to lean thinking might be substantial savings in job time, labor and materials. It could make your small business highly successful and profitable. How Lean Manufacturing Evolved Years ago, auto-maker Toyota pioneered the thought of an engaged, creative workforce because the foundation of a new manufacturing discipline. The employees performed standardized work on a leveled and balanced production schedule, and so they continuously improved their processes. They received the correct level of inventory in the right mix, with the right time (just-in-time), in addition to their goal was to create products of perfect quality the first-time. The entire process was engineered to achieve cost control from the avoidance of waste. Over time, the Toyota model evolved right into a systematic approach to finding ways to continuously improve manufacturing processes, boost productivity, and smooth workflow, by using focus on not waste time, labor and materials. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers referred to it as a fundamentally new system of manufacturing, encompassing all elements of industrial operations. In the automobile industry, lean production generated outstanding cost and quality results. Lean principles have since been applied successfully worldwide in numerous industrial sectors. The Production System Design Laboratory of MIT now defines lean as production design that is certainly aimed at the elimination of waste in all areas, including customer relations, product design, supplier networks and factory management. Its goal would be to incorporate less human effort, less inventory, less time for you to develop products, and much less space to get highly understanding of customer demand, while producing excellent products inside most effective and economical manner possible. What It's All About And How To Get Lean Lean is about getting the proper things on the right place on the right time the first-time while minimizing waste and being open to improve. Lean often means a reduced amount of several things -- less waste, less design time, fewer organizational layers, and fewer suppliers. But lean can also mean more -- more employee empowerment, more flexibility and capability, more productivity, more client satisfaction and long-term, more competitive success. The Five S Principles Lean starts with the worker and also the workspace. No one are able to do their utmost work in the messy, cluttered, dirty environment. So, this fundamental a part of lean manufacturing gets into basics by concentrating on improving your space in which tasks are to be done. Who has not seen a printing shop so crowded that workers can scarcely move? Or, where there exists excess inventory on the floor? Or, the location where the equipment layout actually hinders workflow? Or, the place that the equipment and workspace are dusty, dirty, and never clean? Or, where workers cannot find anything, because it's always lost inside the welter of clutter? These are the symptoms which a 5S program is had to renew the workspace, and instill a team sense in employees that self-directs these to keep their work environment in tip-top shape. 5S emphasizes team spirit, cleanliness and organization to produce and sustain a productive work environment. The 5S steps are: (1) Sort: eliminate the workspace of clutter; (2) Straighten: reorganize the workspace for simple, comfortable use; (3) Scrub: clean everything (floor, equipment, storage, etc.) until it gleams; (4) Standardize: establish methods and schedules for sorting, setting so as and shining the workspace, to keep it that way; (5) Sustain: empower employees to keep their work place in topnotch condition, through self-discipline, team spirit plus a a sense pride. Maximizing Value, Eliminating Waste And Thinking Lean Value is described as anything that positively influences a product's form, fit, function, quality and cost. Waste, around the other hand, is whatever negatively influences the method of making the product, compromises its qualty, or adds to your money. Over-production, excessive movement, waiting, a lot of inventory, over-processing, rework, defective materials, and under-utilized workers each one is types of waste. In a lean enterprise, the worth of an specific product is defined only by the customer. The manufacturing process is externally (not internally) focused and ignores internal assets and techniques. The business continues to be rethought by product line. The entire Value Stream of the product's manufacturing process may be analyzed to disclose: (1) steps that create value; (2) steps that creates no value but they are necessary; and (3) steps that induce no value and could be avoided. By taking your latter, the significance flow of the process might be maximized to an optimum flow speed. The process then is built to fit the product. It is structured so that all activities occur in a very continuous flow. The needs of personnel are addressed to generate the value flow smoothly. The concept is always to let the consumer pull the valued product in the process, as needed (setting a listing level), as opposed to pushing an unsatisfactory product (over stock) with them. Thus, perfect quality, high-value products, as required, get to be the norm. Any hidden waste residual inside value stream is exposed. Dedicated product teams find better solutions to improve the flow worthwhile and eliminate waste. The customer pull determines how much inventory? The system goes toward perfection: because every action creates value or improvements inside value ratio, speed or inventories. Kaizen The definition of the Japanese word is unending, gradual refinement in little details. In other words, continuous improvement. It can be a persistence for ever-honing and polishing the procedure to make it are better, to generate products that are better, more competitive, and also to adapt the task to changing customer and market requirements. Kaizen practices are creditied with 30%...50%....even 100% increases in productivity with no major increase in capital investment. Under the umbrella of Kaizen, we find a host of change-aiding tools and techniques: a person-orientation, total quality control (TQC), robotics, QC circles, suggestion system, automation, discipline inside the workplace, total productive maintenance (TPM), Kambam (a chit recognizing on-time delivery of J-I-T parts towards the alternative inside process), quality improvement, just-in-time, zero defects, select few activities, cooperative labor-management relations, productivity improvement, and new service development. All contribute to maintaining a process-oriented look at manufacturing and improvements over these tools and techniques give rise to an improved process - and better products. Manufacturers Need To Adopt Lean Thinking As mentioned earlier, lean began at Japanese giant, Toyota Motor Works, and yes it successfully evolved from the eastern culture. Only later maybe it was exported to manufacturing units in western Europe and the United States, though mixed results. It appears that U.S. manufacturing executives, especially, demonstrate reluctance to lay aside manufacturing practices of the past and accept new, lean thinking. As these words are written, inspite of the continuing, awesome successes of Toyota and individuals that accept the philosophy a customer-centric model is the reason for any manufacturing firm's existence and success, top executives of U.S. auto manufacturers continue to pooh-pooh basic lean concepts, for example just-in-time. Even as they do so, their companies trail Japanese auto makers in productivity and profitability. Also of note: as recently as in 2010, Toyota invested $1.7 billion in improvements to its just-in-time processes. Would any company be planning to spend that sort of money on practices that don't produce results? By contrast, small manufacturing businesses inside U.S. and Europe (including digital printers) show the will to understand everything they are able to about lean manufacturing and place it into practice immediately. Behind that enthusiasm are nine reasons: 1. Small businesses have people -- most already in value-adding jobs. So, there is less unlearning of old thinking to acquire for an knowledge of lean thinking. Often, a few times of lean training and shop floor improvement are enough to spread a simple understanding of the process through the organization, so benefits result sooner. 2. Lean thinking says we need to go to the shop floor often and pay special attention towards the people who're doing the work. Larger businesses apparently have a hard time carrying this out. But, small businesses rely read more about views from your shop floor, so it's doin' what comes naturally. 3. There isn't greater roadblock to continuous improvement than the usual individual that is fighting to hold work that's not needed, particularly if he's in a very management role. Since smaller businesses currently have lean staffing, that's not as likely to become a problem. 4. In smaller manufacturers, the complete business process is seen to many employees. There is often a likelihood that some cross-training in addition has taken place. So, smaller manufacturers are in a position to introduce the procedure of continuous flow with much less separation between functions than can larger companies. 5. Small manufacturers are usually less structured and regimented than larger companies. It's simpler to introduce change. The infrastructure and systems that stabilize large organizations act with enormous inertia to oppose changing to the improvement process. Status quo, when written in the thousand-page, large-company book of policies and procedures, could be an insurmountable obstacle to change. When those policies dictate outmoded measures, such as machine utilization, economic lot sizing or acceptable level of quality, it could be a major battle to show why time needs to be dedicated to continuous improvement. 6. Computer systems could become another way of enforcing the status quo in larger companies. When lean thinking says that the customer should pull production at the same time computer models are pushing batches in the factory, pushing too often wins. Managers frequently complain which they must work around their ERP systems, in order to produce a pull system. Among smaller manufacturers, computer models are usually less dictatorial. 7. Smaller manufacturers will often be privately held and so not be subject to corporate directives and covenants that may disrupt the continuous improvement process. Decision-making could be fast, as can communication of decisions. And certainly, small business owners are closer for the shop floor, so decisions have a greater chance for being in relation to direct observation. Continuity, important to continuous improvement, is usual for smaller shops -- while rather unusual in larger manufacturers. 8. Small companies lack lots of money. This may be advantageous because it assists them approach lean thinking more efficiently: Lean teaches that process improvement derives from identifying and eliminating waste from a process -- an endeavor that frequently requires little investment. Yet, traditional thinking will tempt us to mechanize or automate to attain improvement. That temptation is proportional to budget money available. Lean teaches to simplify first, lest you have potential risk of automating a wasteful activity. 9. Small companies don't possess lots of energy. While this may hardly seem like a benefit, the not enough free time enables small firms to alter onto lean in a short time. Most large companies will manage to need forever to change, due to inertia and status quo. Small, nimble companies can improve the productivity and profitability with their processes, while larger competitors stumble, looking to get their act together. Getting To Lean The timetable for becoming a lean thinking business can stretch from months to years, dependant on the nature and size of your business. Because it will touch every aspect of one's business and modify the ways people make decisions, behave and interact, it can be best to bring inside a change or conversion agent who provides the counselling, training and specific knowledge required for being lean. The actual design from the business is your decision, of course, and can proceed at any pace you set. But the results of putting it into effect should not just be tracked on a milestone chart, but measured through your clients, as well. Increases in customer happiness and productivity, increases with your company's ability to survive and thrive in any business environment, and improvements with your financial picture without major investment all will soon confirm that the effort to be lean and mean is really paying-off. A Case In Point: PRIDE Industries, Inc. PRIDE Industries can be a diversified contract manufacturing firm headquartered in Roseville, California, USA. The company's annual revenue grew 10%, to just about $87 million, inside fiscal year ended July 2002. Its many-faceted contract manufacturing operations were completed at facilities in nine states, where nearly 4,300 individuals are employed, making products largely sold under other programs' identities. Contract manufacturing enables manufacturers to scale-up their production on-demand. PRIDE supplies the facilities and labor PRIDE is really a nonprofit company as well as mission is easy and unchanging: to make jobs for people who have disabilities. Of particular note: a lot more than 2,800 of the company's workers are those who typically would have been excluded from employment because of a disability or another barrier to employment. Yet, the company continues to experience tremendous success because from the services its business units deliver to customers. Part of this success results from PRIDE's brilliant implementation of lean manufacturing. Steve Twitchell, Business Development Manager explains, PRIDE is in the business of product transformation. We turn unprocessed trash into finished goods for customers. Interestingly enough, the sole dynamic that changes from one job to a new is exactly what have you been doing for doing that? Now, since we've got a direct labourforce that is challenged, we really task our engineering team into the future up with processing, fixturing, templates and also other advances that we are able to add towards the assembly line to really enhance every employee's performance. Quality is not really a separate function, but built right into every process We align the procedure with each employee's specific challenge, so that this process is engineered, but human-focused, too. Training can be intensive. We make use of a wide various training methods in order that every employee precisely understands what is to be done and what will be the optimum way to complete it. Training is a of the essential information 'running lean.' But, because of our own employees' challenges, we've a built-in need to train our people to perfection. In using this method, they get genuine satisfaction from doing a career well, while production efficiency is definitely maximized. The fine-tuned engineering individuals process will be the value we add to the manufacturing. PRIDE also uses customer data and supply chain management techniques to manage the inflow of materials necessary for production, saving serious amounts of keeping employees constantly busy. No an example may be ever chilling out waiting for goods to arrive and we maximize inventory turns, Twitchell says. The results of this all is really a lean enterprise that's constantly busy, turning-out reasonably priced, high-quality products for repeat customers, and earning good paychecks for individuals whose disabilities are already completely neutralized by careful process engineering. Twitchell comments, We tend to own as lean as possible on every job, but we now have waiting lists of men and women hopeful of becoming employees. So, it really is easily possible for us to scale-up nearly immediately to satisfy any demand from my customers. We simply re-engineer the task to fit the more expensive workforce. One of PRIDE's business units specializes in direct-mail marketing and fulfillment. It provides turn-key contract services to customers, including any mixture of designing and digital printing of selling literature, personalizing letters and mailing pieces, as well as inserting, addressing and mailing. HealthNet, a provider of medical care services to former military personnel, is often a PRIDE customer. All of their marketing, enrollment and fulfillment jobs are handled by PRIDE. A great many waves of direct mail step out through the entire year to a huge number of HealthNet subscribers and prospects, with all services provided by PRIDE. Twitchell explains, We use high-speed Canon digital printers with variable-data capabilities. These allow us pre-print and mail out enrollment documents daily, adding variable-data from each individual's region and file, as needed. Our information technology team manages and safeguards all confidential data that goes into each household's enrollment kit. We also use special database software that analyzes different household make-ups, genders, military branches and social security numbers and consolidates multiple forms likely to one address into one envelope. This results in very substantial postage savings to customer. As a result, we have been capable of assemble and send truly 'custom' kits to each household. The kits likewise incorporate HealthNet color literature, produced by PRIDE, then printed and take care of about the Canon digital printers and inserted into each envelope. The result is true, custom assembled enrollment kit packages, mailed to every one and each address. All components of each mailing package are assigned SKUs, so that they can can be retrieved and re-used or updated for subsequent mailings. PRIDE typically works together with HealthNet while on an annual contract basis, even though it has the flexibility to deal with one-time fulfillments, when asked. Twitchell concludes, PRIDE strives to exemplify lean thinking in all its manufacturing processes. We find digital printing a great fit in those processes. We feel that all our core competencies contribute to the success of these processes and now we apply our efforts to continuously improve every detail of the perform. Take Away * Lean manufacturing is an evolving, dynamic process of production covering the entire enterprise. * It is governed by a systematic group of principles, methods and practices. * It embraces all elements of industrial operations (product development, manufacturing, organization, human resources, and customer care). * It includes customer and supplier networks. * Lean production combines the best options that come with craft production (high-quality, individualized, custom-made products) and mass production (manufacturing at great quantities to satisfy broad consumer needs at less expensive costs). * Chief advantages of lean production include the using fewer resources, rapid and efficient product cycles, good quality at less expensive, and greater flexibility. * Within a genuine, lean manufacturing operation, one might expect to encounter zero inventory and zero waiting time; scheduling determined by customer pull as an alternative to push; batch circulation, reduced batch sizes; line balancing; actual reductions in process times; perfect first-time quality by having a continuous quest for zero defects; revelation and solution of problems at their sources; simultaneous achievement of top quality and productivity; teamwork and worker empowerment; waste minimization by removing all non-value added activities; making probably the most efficient using scarce resources (capital, people, space); just-in-time inventory, eliminating any safety nets; continuous improvement (reducing costs, improving quality, increasing productivity) through a dynamic process of change; simultaneous and integrated product/process development; rapid cycle some time and time-to-market; openness and information sharing; flexibility in producing different mixes or greater diversity of products quickly without sacrificing efficiency at lower volumes of production, through rapid set-up and manufacturing in small lot sizes; long-term relationships between suppliers and primary producers (assemblers, system integrators) through collaborative risk-sharing, cost-sharing and information-sharing arrangements. * In true cited, careful engineering of manufacturing processes involving digital printing effectively nullifies any disabilities of employees performing the task. The resulting productivity, efficiency and quality of their production place this contract manufacturing firm one of the top performers in the region. ,Attracting the New Industry Workforce: Do We Know How to Do It?
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