Lean manufacturing, which establishes small production "cells," or teams of workers, who complete an entire product from raw material processing through final assembly and shipment, increases health and safety hazards by mixing previously separated exposures to various chemicals (with possible additive and cumulative effects) and noise. The intensification of work leads to greater ergonomic and...

An increasing number of ERP providers offer support of Lean Management in their software. As part of a larger research project this article gives an insight which elements of Lean Management are already covered by ERP-systems. More than 150 different functionalities within the ERP-systems have been identified that support Lean Management. Not surprising production planning, scheduling and pull ...

This study applies lean production and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain management. In this study, a three-tier spare parts supply chain with inefficient transportation, storage and retrieval operations is investigated. Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is used to draw current state mapping and future state mapping (with lea...

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to show how over the last 18 months Bolton Hospitals NHS Trust have been exploring whether or not lean methodologies, often known as the Toyota Production System, can indeed be applied to healthcare. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH This paper is a viewpoint. FINDINGS One's early experience is that lean really can save lives. The Toyota Production System is a...

Manufacturing organizations always needs some ways to reduce production lead time, eliminate waste and increase quality to survive in today’s competitive world. Lean manufacturing is such a technique used by industries all over the world in past few decades. It consists of various tools and techniques to reduce waste and increase productivity. One of the major tools in lean manufacturing is Val...

Are lean production and globalization the necessary conditions for future success of car industry firms, as affirm numerous commentators and experts, or is it possible to discern several paths possible? To answer this question, it would be fitting to look back upon the history of automobile firms since the beginning of the 1970s. Lean production was not the only successful production system. Ac...

The phenomenon of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and term “Lean” have received much attention from researchers especially practitioners over past 40 years. As scholarly perspectives on these topics continue to evolve, we invited Wally Hopp Mark Spearman contribute an essay JOM Forum that became “The Lenses Lean,” several other prominent authors affiliated with Lean react article share their...

 This paper looks at, within the context of lean production, how and in what ways employees participate in environmental improvements. The paper uses data from an automobile plant well known for its participative work structures, New United Motor Manufacturing (NUMMI), to look more closely at the dynamics of worker participation in environmental management (i.e. management of pollution ...