Implementation of Lean Manufacturing in Computer Integrated Environment

In this competitive era, manufacturing enterprises struggle to adopt cost-effective manufacturing systems. Overview of the recent manufacturing enterprises shows that successful global manufacturing enterprises have distributed their manufacturing capabilities over the globe. The successes of global manufacturing enterprises depend upon the adaptation of appropriate manufacturing technologies like computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) and worldwide integration of their product development processes along with the concepts of lean manufacturing so that their corporate goals are achieved. CIM is a strategy that helps to improve the performance of a manufacturing firm by integrating various areas of manufacturing where as lean ideas are the tools that cause work tasks in a process to be performed with minimum of nonvalue adding activities. It focuses on customer needs by delivering the requirement at less time, with high quality and at cheaper cost by eliminating hidden waste. This study addresses the productivity improvement of a globally collaborating enterprise having its plants at diverse locations, by implementing various lean tools which results in improved system and surrounding performance.