The document summarizes a lean improvement simulation involving 11 students randomly assigned roles in a scaled-down production line. In the first round, the production line faced many issues like bottlenecks and missed deadlines. Later rounds incorporated process improvements like redesigning stations and quality control strategies. This led to higher productivity, less waste and inventory, and better customer satisfaction. The simulation demonstrated how lean concepts like continuous improvement, process design and efficiency can impact an organization's success.

1. Team 10 – Lagos Lean Improvement Simulation Page 1 of 8
Lean Improvement Simulation
Global Operations – DEM4 – 10340. Professor: Nicholas Wake
Team 10 – Lagos
Mohammed Soliman, Yazan Tayyem, Ibrahim Wahsh, Fernando Rivera, Adnan Ahmad, Eduardo Szmurlo, Bisner Yousfi
INTRODUCTION:
The best way to analyze operational issues facing customers of all sizes is to do a practical
example of how a production line is run, challenges faced by customers on daily basis and how
they can be fixed by using different standards such as Lean Method, 5S’s Sand Cone etc. It’s
important to understand the role operations department plays in any organization and concepts
such as flexibility, communication, process design play a critical role in success or failure of the
organization.
In order to have a visual understanding of real life issues facing many customers, 11 students
were randomly selected and assigned different roles simulating those in a scaled down
production line. As part of the exercise the subjects were supposed to take a simple process of
labeling cups with stickers (today's shipment) cover them with a lid and insert a straw for later
shipping to customers (additional random subjects) for immediate use. However, customers had
specific requirements to be met like in any real life case; colored stickers had to be placed
14mm from the top of the cup, each tray must contain 4 cups tightly fitted to make sure they
stay in place when handled. Each shipment to customer would consist of 7 trays that need to be
delivered between 110 seconds to 130 seconds.
Quality control is key to customers as they wanted supply to be controlled so that it would fit
with their business process. Some of the conditions for the supply rejection are mentioned
below and these directly or indirectly affect the business and profitability of the supplier.
• Cup is not properly fit.
• Lid is not properly closed.
• Sticker is in the correct position from the top.
• Straw is not completely inside.
• Shipment is not delivered in the required time.
The responsibilities of the teams were:
• Inventory to be provided to the teams
• Putting the stickers
• Putting the lid
• Putting it in the cup
• Putting straw
• Quality Assurance
• Logistics and delivery to customer
• Operational Manager
• Time auditor and controller
• Independent analyst
In the first round, there multiple observers and consultants overlooking the operations; the flow
of items in the production line was not smooth and many simple problems where faced that
could have been easily avoided. After the completion of the first run different teams were
assigned as consultants to develop proposal for improvement plus the team running the factory
had an option to come up with their own process improvement plan.

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For the next round the customer defined stringent requirements, however the teams managed
to get the multiple process improvements implemented which resulted in better performance
and higher productivity per employee. The inventories were reduced and better customer
satisfaction was achieved, it also highlights the importance of operational efficiency and process
design that could have on success or failure of a company.
As part of the exercise the issues identified on each process are documented, such as design
process changes, resource realignment and others; that are presented below in the study.
ISSUES
The following are the main issues observed:
• Data management: “You can’t manage what you don’t measure. What get measured, gets
improved” (Peter Drucker). Having that said, a key point was setting KPI’s, measuring them
and develop a strategy to improve them.
• Planning & process design: as mentioned before, the tasks were simple and easy; the
teams couldn’t figure out all the tricks, neither succeed in meeting the deadlines nor achieve
the required KPIs. Simply put, that was because when the team started the work, they just
started executing the tasks, without designing the process which includes allocating the
recourses, assigning tasks, managing the inventory and running the operation.
• Time management: at the end of the first run, the elapsed time was 20 minutes and 30
second which exceeded the target. The challenge was “What do we need to do differently in
order to bring this number down close to the benchmark”. The team analyzed the
processes, timed each task, identified the bottlenecks and try to find solutions to reduce the
total time and run the operation more efficiently. By the end of the simulation, the teams
managed to reach 5 minutes in the second trial and the three teams have almost managed
to deliver a shipment in 17 seconds in third run.
• Quality control & customer satisfaction: anyone can do the job, even within the required
time; an important aspect is whether the final product matches the required specifications
which will make the customers satisfied. Hence, it was easy to do the job, run the operation,
allocate the tasks and match the deadline; but the challenging task was to do that while
producing the right product with the right specification, in the right quality and increase
customer satisfaction.
• Waste: an important consideration in a factory line is the wastage of resources like time,
effort, material and others; during the simulation it was identified that there were more
resources on multiple stations than required; low quality issues also caused waste of
product and an increase in costs to the company.
• Communication issues: managing any production line and operation processes requires two
ways of communication and the operation manager need to keep continuous flow of
information in order to be able to measure the effectiveness of his/her decisions and in order
to receive feedback from the team to improve the processes.
Decisions
Redesign of the Factory Process
The process redesign starts with the customer’s first order and the original design. The team
faced many challenges during the factory production process, chaotic movements, a bottleneck
in the labeling station. The first station was the tray loading, which had to be unloaded and
loaded again in the next steps by completing the tasks, which led to a technical problem and

3. Team 10 – Lagos Lean Improvement Simulation Page 3 of 8
rejection from the QA/QC station as well as from the customer due to the loosely fit cup in the
tray.
Therefore it was decided to change the operations strategy, by using the experience combined
with fresh external ideas from consultants. The required operations efficiency was achieved in
the last three runs, and regardless of the new requirements for each order. This confirms the
Sandcone model, since improvement in quality, dependability, speed, flexibility and cost were
achieved.
• One Employee
• low Performance
Invertory &
Logistics
• One Employee
• high performance
• wrong position
Tray Loading
• One employee
• low performance
• Bottleneck
Labeling
• One Employee
• Satisfactory
Performance
Led Placement
• One Employee
• Satisfactory
Performance
Strow
Injection
• One Employee
• Low Performance
QA/QC
• One Employee
• Satisfactory
Performance
Delivery
• Five Employees
• fast in inspection
• Massive delay
from our side
Customer
inspection
•One Employee
•High Performance
Invertory
&
Logistics
•Two Employees
•High performance
•Right position
Labeling
&
Lid Placement •Two Employees
•high performance
•Right position
Tray Loading
&
Strow Injection
•One Employee
•High Performance
•Right position
QA/QC
&
Delivery •Two Employees
•Slow inspection
•On time Delivery
Customer
inspection
Production Process - 7 Stations with “11” Persons
One Production Manager + One Logistics Manager + Two Analysts
Production Process - 3 Stations with “9” Persons
One Production Manager + One Logistics Manager + Analysts
Original Design
Engineered Design

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Changing of the Quality Control Strategy
During the original design the QA/QC station was challenged to perform its job with respect to
the quality and dependability, and this is was the key factor for the failure in o satisfying the
customer in the first run.
The action taken was to assign the QA/QC responsibility on the remaining stations. Every
station will inspect the work done at the previous station, which allows to save resources for
rejections by QA/QC as well as the customer. In the same time the pressure is reduced on the
QA/QC station, and he got the responsibility of delivery to interact with the customer’s
inspectors and get their feedback. In other cases the QA/QC station was completely removed
and the resources were reallocated.
Process Efficiency Improvement:
With the reduction of the process stations from seven to three, the following was achieved:
• Avoidance of bottlenecks, by assigning two people to the station.
• Facilitate the ability for proper QA/QC inspection on each other’s work, increase the
focus and skills.
• Reduction of the personnel from eleven to nine with much better outcome.
• High quality with cost optimization, which has been reflected actively on the organization
overall strategy.
Inventory Management
Compared to the original design, the drop in the inventory can be observed, with the absence of
the record and analysis, which were clear in the inventory records. Analytical methods were
used to identify the exact requirements from the beginning to deliver the customer order with the
lowest materials waste and plan the delivery to each station with no interruption.
Waste reduction
The packed straw was used which has a higher price, needs manpower to remove the cover
during the process and also generates waste. This costs the organization more time and
money. And by using the sleeveless straw it saves time and money without any process
interruption or compromising the quality.
DECISIONS ANALYSIS
Design
Trays
output
Elapsed
Time
Output
rate
Workers Productivity
Throughput
time
Inventory
Internal
rejects
Customer
rejects
Sticker
rejects
Delivery
time
Space
1 21 20:30 1.03 11 0.09 - 38, 45, 47, 47 3.80% 40% 28% 0% 6
2 21 5:00 4.20 11 0.36 3:18 - 3.80% 21% 2% 66% 5
3 21 8:00 2.60 9 0.29 5:18 - 0% 4% 0% 60% 3
4 22 6:20 3.50 9 0.39 1:38 6 0% 9% 0% 100% 3
1
2 21 6:00 3.30 10 0.33 5:16 30,32 0% 18% 0% 33% 5
3 21 5:30 3.90 9 0.44 2:58 26,19,13,7 0% 4% 0% 33% 3
4 21 4:03 4.90 9 0.54 - 7 0% 9% 0% 85% 3
1
2
3 28 8 3.50 10 0.35 - 9, 10, 8, 7 6% 25% 0% 40% 3
4 21 6:40 3.30 9 0.36 - 4 0% 5% 0% 91% 2
Factory 1Factory 2Factory 3

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Table 1: Data with outcomes of the simulations
In the second round of the simulation (design 2) one of the key decisions was to rearrange the
production line, this was effective in reducing the overall time of the production run from 20 to 5
min.
The output rate was increased from 1.03 trays/min to 4.2 trays/min, productivity also went up
from 0.09 to 0.36 trays/min-person above the 0.2 target set by the headquarter, however the
quality was below expectation with high customer rejects at 21%.
A second improvement was identified to reduce wastage, this was achieved by improving the
arrangement of the supplies (stacking cups, etc.) reduced handling time and movement or
supplies, this was rapidly adopted by all teams and further developments were implemented in
later stages.
Factory 2 (F2) was implemented according to the proposal of the consulting company, the
performance was less but close of that of F1, and customer rejects were less 18%, this lagging
result is attributable to the F1 team gaining expertise on performing the tasks of the process.
In the 3rd
round of the simulation (design 3) it was decided to change the quality control strategy,
this required everyone to take personal ownership of quality of his job, this rendered major
improvements reducing customer rejections to 4% for both F1 and F2; however the changes in
the customer demand requiring batches of different colors and combinations put the process
under stress and therefore performance was reduced.
Factory 3 (F3) was then setup and took advantage of the knowledge from the previous
iterations, this is shown by performance figures similar or better to F1 and F2, however for F3
quality was not up to the level of the other teams, a 25% customer rejection rate can be
explained by the lack of experience and skill of the new crew.
In the 4th
round (design 4) further demand changes increased the level of stress on the teams.
F1 changed the organization to implement two lines of production, the results of which were
mixed, productivity and throughput improved significantly compared with the previous design;
100% delivery was achieved. However, due to the pressures of the 17 second delivery
requirement, the customer rejection rate went up from 4% to 9%.
F2 implemented the 5S methodology to arrange the supplies to match the demand
requirements, this allowed this factory to achieve the maximum output and productivity of all
teams. Surprisingly the delivery rate was only 85%, which was due to an agreed reduction of the
tack time from 17 to 9 seconds that was ultimately not achieved. Another change was to
negotiate with the customers to relocate their receiving facilities next to the factory to minimize
transport and handling in the delivery.
LEAN SYNCHRONIZATION
Through the different rounds in the simulation production teams were able to streamline the
process by eliminating several barriers identified in the process: waiting time, process
inefficiencies and wasted motion.
The advice given by Consultancy # 3 and the experience gradually achieved by factory
operators allowed to redesign the layout and the task descriptions to achieve a systemized
process that gave factory teams control of their process flow.

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Once the teams identified how to quickly label the cups, the process became dependable; after
a few rounds factory members gained experience and flexibility to adjust their performance to
reduce bottlenecks even when different colors of straws were required for each round
(variability).
Cups were labeled with the stickers at the required spacing from the edge and correctly placed
into the trays. This was done in a smooth flow that producing the quantity of products required
by customers which increased productivity, thus reducing costs. At a second stage, production
teams reduced the distance traveled to the customers in order to reduce costs and increase
profitability. It was interesting to observe that production managers soon realized that they need
to communicate better with their customers as well as vertically within their organizations.
Teams applied principles of quality control,
the position of QA/QC control was eliminated
and everybody became responsible for
quality. Performance was measured based
on productivity, the size of the inventory
accumulated and number of tables.
Graph 1: Lean Synchronisation source Nigel
et al 2015 page 369, figure 11.4.
Production teams F2 and F3 were more
successful than F1 due to their discipline and
flexibility as well as the equality among their
members who enjoyed the autonomy to influence the process. Successful teams improved the
processes by applying the lessons learned in the previous runs (continuous learning).
It was observed team F1 had an increased in inventory accumulated in the last run, which
shows that some of the changes implemented did not improve the efficiency of the process.
In the last round the teams achieved leveled scheduling since they maintained the volume of
flow between stages even thus managing to meet the tack time as required to deliver the
products in 17 seconds without affecting quality. A
simple implementation of Kanban was used to
control the accumulation of inventory.
The Sandcone Model
The sandcone model aims to explain the process
improvement cycle to achieve the operational and
strategic objectives. To reach a successful model of
sandcone, it must be supporting the process
maturity, which means that the process needs to be
defined in a precise sequence to achieve
performance improvement at each stage and then
move to the next level within the sandcone model.
This model helps improve the process before providing financial benefits otherwise this can lead
to problems in the long run.
Graph 2 – The Sandcone model
1

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The module starts with the quality as the base of precondition for all lasting improvements
continuous quality monitoring, modification is going all the way up justifying the cost reduction
objective.
Dependability in the operations systems at the second stage should not stop the quality
improvement process to achieve the stability in operations to elevate the `cycle to stage 3
“Speed”.
Speed of the operational process of the internal throughput with continuous progression of the
previous two stages will support the flexibility in the reaction to the production system and its
changes to meet the targets.
Applying the proven modifications from the three below stages helps achieve the cost reduction
components either in the human resources, raw materials, processing time or logistics which
help benefit the business in the long run justifying cost reduction as a business edge over
competitor.
OUTCOMES:
At the beginning, the production cycle was not running smoothly and was way behind the
customer expectation and productivity per person as suggested by the management. Some of
the basic points such as well-defined roles, production flow, the initial cycle results were
unsatisfactory and major communication issues were highlighted. The feedback from customers
and production line was not communicated to the teams in time so that it could be fixed to
improve situation on the fly.
After long internal discussions and feedback from the consultants, it was clear many things had
to be fixed to improve the overall situation and bring operations in line with company
expectations.
In the second round we realigned the workforce by having more members put the sticker as an
example and removed the bottleneck at the start of the production cycle. It was also identified
that instead of measuring the positioning of the sticker, it would be much better to place the
cups in a certain order so that the sticker would be placed on the correct position without any
measurement.
Secondly it was identified that more cups could be moved at this stage however, there was a
bottleneck that developed at the next stage of putting the lid and straw on the cups. Resources
were reallocated on the new stage to remove the bottleneck. Then supply chain issue was also
highlighted and teams were realigned and more resources were assigned to delivery to make
sure all shipments were delivered on time. At this stage there was an interesting problem where
deliveries were below the customer expectation time and were rejected because the process
was faster than required.
Because of the functional changes the number of rejected shipments was also reduced and
better quality control was in place.
This was a clear proof of how process design and operational efficiency can impact business. At
this stage the customer increased their acceptance criteria to more stringent by changing the
order combination to something very specific and for this the production line had to be
adaptable and flexible to match the requirements.

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To achieve the above targets the sandcone model had to be followed, in order to ensure quality
was maintained as the number one priority because any degradation in quality would not be
acceptable to the customer.
Once the quality issued was fixed the next stage of the sandcone model is to achieve
dependability. Making sure the factory can depend on the design and processes to assure
customer satisfaction and flexibility to adapt to changes.
Since the customer changed the requirements to deliver a tray every 17 seconds it was needed
to make sure speed was enhanced keeping the quality and dependability intact. Practice made
the workforce much faster, resulting in cases where they were able to ship a tray in as low as 10
seconds. Now with all these factors the factories had to be flexible to meet customer demands
to ensure that different color combinations were delivered as required, resulting in complication
from inventory perspective however still meeting the quality standards.
However in today tough competition cost is a factor that needs to be carefully considered so that
the factory can compete with other players in the market. It was realized that if the work force
was reduced and the Lean process was adapted, costs would be reduced, productivity per
employee would also be improved, reduced workspace is required, and still be able to ship
more trays with quality, than what was required by the customer.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Understand the customer requirements and perceptions before developing the
operations strategy
• Eliminate waste as much as possible through enhanced production efficiencies
• Create two way communication with internal & external stakeholders
• Focus on improving the following elements:
o Simplified production processes
o Increase loyalty in the working environment
o Enhance employees capabilities
• Quality ownership within all processes
• Experience is also the base for improvement
• Agree on expectations within the organization
• Just in time delivery
• Create KPI's for all jobs in the production process