Due Thursday Respond to one or more of the following in a minimum of 175 words: Describe an example where Theory of Constraints (TOC) was successfully applied to improve a process, or where you saw th

Stephanie Wrote:

A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.

To accomplish this, lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.

Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Companies are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and with very fast throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.

A popular misconception is that lean is suited only for manufacturing. Not true. Lean applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.

The term "lean" was coined to describe Toyota's business during the late 1980s by a research team headed by Jim Womack, Ph.D., at MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program.

Mary Wrote:

  • What is the lean concept and why is it important to study?

With fewer resources lean creates more value for customers. The idea of maximizing customer value while minimizing waste. Lean is important to study because there are so many benefits such as through lean there is a cost benefit. we can increase quality and reliability. Reduce operating costs, boost staff productivity and reduce the length of production cycles.

  • How can lean be applied to manufacturing and service processes?

TOYOTA is the best example of a company that use lean processes and implement them. Toyota is the first major company to use lean ideology in their manufacturing processes. They have eliminated wasted and using techniques to get rid of faulty products that do not interest the customers. They use two processes, one is Jidoka and the other one is JIT or just in time. Jidoka is used to check the quality of the product and can stop the machines themselves down when there is an error. JIT/ just in time leads to the next step once the previous step is finished.

https://www.lean.org/whatslean/

https://refinedimpact.com/4-good-examples-of-companies-that-use-lean-manufacturing/