Lean manufacturing and JIT

1. Dr. Adel Younis
Quality consultant
Quality Tip
The main concern: Just in time & Lean manufacturing
My approach in this quality tip is not to explain the idea or philosophy of JIT, or LM,
cause of the enormous number of reference and books published for that purpose
in particular, with a punch of quality and Business management leaders all over the
world, however, in this quality tip, I’ll tend to discuss and demonstrate simply, why
we’re in Egypt and under the current circumstances and conditions will not be apple
to apply or implement the JIT, or LM Models, at any of our business organizations,,,
This prospective or writing a quality tip, “with a little dark vision” – which is not by
the way my style of explaining any of the quality management mysteries- based on
the complexity of the mentioned models, or to its sophisticated requirements, its
actually most related to , our own Egyptian culture, attitude and behavior,,,
It is not a matter of mentality that can digest understanding such models, it is well
known already the Egyptian mentality of applying and getting useful of a lot of
models and systems in many variety of fields , but again , the models mentioned
above is mainly related to - as will be explained and demonstrated after – to human
contribution and reflex , which means that it is again, depends on the human
factor,,,
Back to mu quality tip, in order to proof my point of view, first I’ll try to
demonstrate the meaning, requirements, and usage of both JIT, LM, then and
through my notes, and texts, it will be clear to all viewers the main reasons of my
chocking opinion,,,
In the beginning , we should start from the definition of JIT / LM , as a business
term , it defined according to the APICS dictionary as:
“ a philosophy of manufacturing based on planned elimination of all waste, and
continuous improvement of productivity, it encompasses the successful execution of
all manufacturing activities required to produce a final product, from design
engineering to delivery including all states of conversion from raw material on
word”

2. Dr. Adel Younis
Quality consultant
From the above “ little long definition”, simply it seems that this model is related to
manufacturing businesses, aiming to improve its productivity levels, but, as I’ll
demonstrate later on, it is already applied in many service provision organization as
successful as in the manufacturing firms, as such organizations adapt their working
systems to meet the requirements of the model.
JIT, and LM, normally get many other terms, expressing almost the same meaning
, it is called Continuous flow manufacturing in IBM, Stockless production in Hewlett
– Packard, Management by sight like in General Electric, and Short cycle
manufacturing in Motorola,
Reviewing all of the above mentioned expressions tends to give a primary
impression of the model that it mainly re-designs, re-structure the manufacturing
process, so that, it save time of production, and decrease waste due to its
activities.
Preparation to introduce JIT, to an organization.
JIT, just like any other model, doesn’t come free to any organization , certain
changes in the organization must occur before getting the benefit of applying the
system in place , among changes are:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Stabilized production schedules
Increased production capacity
Improved product quality
Team training programs
Reduced equipment’s break downs
Mutual beneficial relationship with suppliers.
In order to understand how such changes can be conducted in place and can be
planned from the beginning, so that, transferring any manufacturing style of any
organization will be changed to JIT models, we, have to understand the needed
elements for JIT to be applied,
In regular situations, it takes very long details to explain these requirements , but,
I’ll try to brief these requirements as follows :
1) Eliminating waste:
It targets the elimination of waste of all kinds to its least amount can be achieved,
Japanese authorities identified the main wastes in production to be eliminated as “
-
Overproduction , work only what is needed now
Waiting, coordinate flow diagrams between operations

3. Dr. Adel Younis
Quality consultant
-
Transportation, design facility layouts that reduces or eliminate material
handling and shipment.
- Work-in-process inventories, eliminate or reduce step up times
- Motion and efforts, eliminating decreasing human motion as possible
- Defective product, eliminating of defective product.
2) Enforce problem solving and continuous improvement
This element mainly dealing with production workers “ operators”, by giving them
the authority and power to take some necessary decisions during work, in some
cases, may reach the level of stopping production, if needed”, in case of finding any
problem related to product quality or specification, in organizations applying the
JIT, model for a while can reach the level of encouragement of workers to reduce in
process inventories a step further to see if any production problems occur.
3) Total quality management.
As every one in the organization is involved in JIT and committed to produce a
perfect product every time, which is typical the main concept of TQM.
4) Parallel processing
Whenever possible, it is required to merge , exploit, parallel processing, instead of
consequent typical production methods, however, to reach such purpose,
organizations may be subjected to layout redesign, product redesign,,,,etc.
5) KanBan production control.
To understand the KIT elements of control, we’ve first to differentiate between push
and pull production systems, in the 1st one workers look at the schedule to
determine what to produce next, but in the in the pull system, workers look only on
the next stage of production, and determine what is needed in this particular stage
only, then they prepare all needed items , materials , ….etc. for this purpose, and
produce it, which leads to not having any production batches stored in inventory, it
is rather goes to downstream stages directly.
JIT, is a typical pull system, some control measures are needed to be applied to
control the coordination of pull system, so that, production steps are followed by
the next one, with only a prior request from the receiving stage.
Such step can be done, by using a signaling system to communicate between work
stations, so that it begins to produce only when signaled by the later stage, this
signal system is called Kan Ban cards, or Kan ban production control
6) JIT purchasing ,

4. Dr. Adel Younis
Quality consultant
JIT, as a management control system for manufacturers mainly , it depends mainly
on providing the needed production items, materials, tools ….etc. at the point of
use, only at the time of use.
This approach requires by mandate, a perfect purchased materials / items, which
can be achieved by applying a well-designed supplier qualification program, which
can simply summarized in the following steps:
-
Restructuring relationship with suppliers, to be more cooperative, “ Japanese
call suppliers a co-producer”
Developing a long term business relationship with suppliers, supported by
long term contracts.
Developing not only, price, quality and delivery time checking parameters
with the supplier, but as well mutual beneficial business relationship.
Extending JIT model to supplier entity.
Choosing as possible and appropriate nearby located supplies.
Delivering shipment to production lines directly.
Small, standard in size shipment
A near perfect in quality approach in delivering items.
7) Step-up reduction,
As mentioned in the previous element of JIT, it is needed to have in place a small
size of production, and decrease level of inventory, which by default will need to “
result in “ elevated rate of production lines, machines step-up, however, the JIT to
redesign all possible production parameters, line machines, procedures, even
product, so that it achieve the minimum limit possible of set ups.
Setup reduction is continuous process in JIT and aiming, it is important to get
workers involved at each workstation in it, in order to reach the best ideas and best
time for set ups.
8) Repetitive manufacturing
It is defined in the APICS dictionary as
“ the repeated production of the same discrete or family of products” , where
repetitive methodology minimizes set ups, inventory, and manufacturing lead
times.

5. Dr. Adel Younis
Quality consultant
This approach leads to decrease the human factor / error, to its least levels, at
which, as long as the production steps are repeated in routine “ systematic”,
pattern, number of errors decreased.
The above mentioned items “ elements” of JIT, model, summarizes the needed
requirements to have an effective system employed in place, such system is
employed in a large number of organizations, and in an elevated number of
countries, because of its benefits, which can be summarized as follows:
-
Inventory levels are drastically reduced
Production time is greatly reduced
Production quality improved
Taken spaces, capacity of production facility effectively used
Production times becomes streamline problem free.
After reviewing all of the above mentioned system description , and demonstration ,
it seems that the system mainly concerns the following two main topics :
1) It is a model of management, depends on organizations decision makes, and
top M. commitment, the system needs, by providing the needed resources to
its implementation, and knowing that Egyptian organizations lack of this type
of leaders, welling not only, to take such decisions, but as well, to pay its
costs.
2) Most of the elements depends on the human factor , meaning the people
involvement , and as well known in Egypt . any people related factor will be
subjected to many circumstances and under the recent factors will be
subjected to opinions and ideas of each worker individually , which will for
sure affect the feasibility of applying the system.