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Essay on Lean Methodology In The Air Force
Brief Background on Lean Methodology:
'Lean' was first described in a book, named The Machine That Changed the World (Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1990) that introduced the concepts of lean manufacturing as instrumental to the future of the world auto industry. This book basically detailed how the Toyota automobile production procedure became more efficient through this methodology.
Now other industries, including the aerospace and pharmaceutical divisions, are applying the same theory to their manufacturing and production systems. Several characteristics are:
. Lean is a dynamic process of change steered by a methodical set of standards and best practices intended at constantly expanding the enterprise.
. Lean talks about the whole enterprise: from the store floor to the administrative suite, and from the supplier to purchaser chain.
. Lean entails eradicating all that is non-value-added.
. Becoming lean is a complicated task. There is no lone thing that will make a company lean.
Lean can signify "less" in terms of less design time, fewer organizational layers, less waste, less cost, and fewer suppliers per customer.
But, lean can also mean "more" in terms of more worker empowerment, more elasticity and potential, more efficiency, more quality, higher customer satisfaction, and more lasting economical success. Some may say that the term 'lean' does not mean doing more with less, but more exactly doing more with the same labor force and being able to get rid of the surfeit resulting in more productivity and efficiency.
In a nutshell, lean concentrates on value-added activities.
However a question arises; how does an enterprise recognize if it is lean? Scaling the company against best in-house operations, external straight competition, external working best operations, or common functions irrespective of industry, can be one degree of the comparative value of a business's leanness. Additionally, properly selected metrics are the....
