Implementation of lean thinking through A3 report in plastic injection company

Lean thinking, or lean production, which has long been introduced by Toyota, is a process improvement concept that is carried out by eliminating waste and focusing more on things that create values. Its emergence was inspired by the fact on the production floor, where only a small fraction of the total times and efforts contributed to creating added value to customers’ final product. Lots of prior studies have shown various benefits of implementing lean production, especially in manufacturing industries. However, many companies still find difficulties trying to implement a lean approach for the first time. Furthermore, they do not have a clear and concise picture of each component of the lean approach they want to apply. This company is based on case study which has many rejected products so that it makes higher production cost. Therefore, this study proposed an implementation of lean thinking to reduce the number of rejected products through A3 report. This result show the defects can be reduced and the standard operational procedure has been developed.Â

Lean product development: nothing new under the sun?

The concept of lean product development has attracted the attention of many scholars since its inception in the 1990s derived from practices at Toyota Motor Company. Key to this approach to new product development (NPD) are a few methods derived from lean production as well as longer established practices such as concurrent engineering. This makes one wonder whether lean product development is a new practice, a new method or an encapsulation of already existing methods at the time; this quest for the roots and tenets of lean product development, also in comparison with other methods for NPD, is the focus of this paper. This journey takes this propositional paper not only to the roots of lean product development and the context of its era of conception, but also to what this concept adds to other extant methods for NPD. In particular, this comparison draws out that other methods are trying to achieve the same objectives: the creation of products and services with value to the customer, the reduction of time-to-market and the efficient use of resources. This inference implies that managers of new product (and service) development can choose from a wider pallet of methods and approaches to enhance the performance of R&D and to connect better to manufacturing (including supply chains). Inevitably, this has implications for research on (lean) product and service development; hence, this paper sets out a research agenda based on the deliberations and gaps that have been uncovered in the discourse

Melhoria da gestão do processo de negócio de um departamento de excelência operacional: uma proposta de reestruturação

Os processos de negócio sofrem constantes mutações para acompanhar o crescimento e responder aos desafios que as organizações enfrentam diariamente. Melhorar continuamente os processos confere vantagem competitiva e permite que as organizações incrementem a sua eficiência, eliminando desperdícios e custos desnecessários. A Prio Energy S.A. é uma das empresas que possui uma das maiores quotas no mercado dos combustíveis, sendo também uma das que mais tem crescido e alargado o seu portfólio de negócios. O presente trabalho resulta do projeto realizado no seio do departamento de excelência operacional desta organização. Pretende-se melhorar a gestão do processo de negócio deste departamento, analisando as suas atividades e fluxos de informação. Para realizar a análise crítica do processo recorreu-se à metodologia do Ciclo de Vida BPM e à modelação de processos usando a linguagem BPMN 2.0, bem como a uma ferramenta Lean para identificar as atividades que não acrescentam qualquer valor ao processo. Com consequência desta análise foram desenvolvidas e aplicadas ferramentas de apoio à tomada de decisão e à gestão de conhecimento, nomeadamente a ferramenta Lean do relatório A3, o Microsoft Power BI e o Microsoft Power Apps. O resultado deste projeto reside na melhoria global do desempenho do departamento, tanto ao nível da atuação dos intervenientes no próprio processo como da transformação da informação e preservação do conhecimento. Espera-se que a melhoria do processo de um departamento cujo foco é melhorar rácios, diminuir ineficiências de outros processos de negócio e aproximar as equipas, influencie e beneficie toda a organização.Business processes are constantly changing to keep pacewithgrowth and reactto the challenges that organizations face on a daily basis.Continuously improving processes gives competitive advantage and enablesorganizations to increase their efficiencybyeliminating waste and unnecessary costs.Prio Energy S.A.is one of the companies withthe largest share in the fuelmarket, being also the one that has grown and expanded its business portfolio the most. This work results from the project carried out inthe operational excellence department. The main goal isto improve the management of the department’s business process, analysingits activities and information flows. To carry out the critical analysis of the process, the BPM Life Cycle methodology and process modellingusing the BPMN 2.0 language were used, as well as a Lean tool to identify activities that do not add any value to the process.As a result of theanalysis, tools to support decision making and knowledge management were developed and applied, namely the Lean tool A3 report, Microsoft Power BI and Microsoft Power Apps. The result of this project lies in the overall improvement of the department's performance, both in terms of the performance of the stakeholders in the process itself and in the transformation of information and knowledge preservation. It is expected that improving the process of a department that focuses on improving ratios, reducing inefficiencies in other business processes and bringing teams closer together, will influence and benefit the entire organization.Mestrado em Engenharia e Gestão Industria

Reuse of Engineering Knowledge: Perspectives on Experience-Based Codified Knowledge in Incremental Product Development

Product development is a knowledge-intensive activity and as products become more complex and competition intensifies, the amount of knowledge increases. A prerequisite for engineers who apply current best practices and continuously improve their working methodologies is to efficiently reuse existing knowledge. However, current trends during which individuals switch positions at an increasing speed and when the information is more dynamic, fleeting and more rapidly gained than ever before, calls for enhanced preparedness to meet these challenges. Numerous initiatives have been made, yet repeated design-related product issues are a recurring phenomenon which ultimately results in organizations either succeeding or disappearing from the market place. Guided by three research questions faced by the engineers, this thesis sets to (1) identify and analyze the characteristics of codified knowledge that support knowledge reuse; (2) Develop and enhance knowledge reuse support based on the characteristics identified in order to increase such knowledge reuse within product development organizations; and finally, the thesis aims to (3) evaluate the implementation of this support.In order to answer the first research question, a study exploring barriers to the reuse of codified knowledge highlighted eighteen potential barriers, eight of them associated with the individual at the engineering level. The discoveries within literature formed the basis for analyses and identification of ten characteristics regarding the quality of knowledge for reuse.As a continuation of the identified characteristics resulting from the first research question and to answer the second research question, a framework to efficiently support knowledge reuse has evolved. This framework is referred to as Engineering Checksheets and sets out to divide engineering knowledge into actionable pieces which not only give the engineers the answer to what to do, but also how and why a decision or action should be carried out, which have been identified as important components to foster knowledge reuse and to further enable continuous improvements.To answer the third research question, Engineering Checksheets have been implemented in industry and have been actively applied during several years in a variety of settings within a couple of organizations. An evaluation of the support implemented testifies to several valuable lessons learned, including dividing knowledge into actionable pieces which makes it both easier to apply the knowledge, as well as being notified when new knowledge has been gained but not yet captured, which is also helpful to the process of continuously capturing knowledge. The findings bear witness of the fact that efficient Knowledge Management is not so much about the IT system as it is about the Knowledge Management process and individual motivation. This thesis provides a pathway for organizations and engineers to extend their narrow focus of capturing knowledge by embracing and highlighting the perspective of knowledge reuse. By facilitating a habit and mindset of continuously capturing and reusing knowledge, product development organizations can greatly increase their effectiveness and quality of output

Aplicação do SMED nas linhas de montagem da Grohe Portugal

Num mundo altamente globalizado, é essencial para a sobrevivência das empresas o aumento do leque de produtos disponíveis de forma a atender as expectativas dos clientes e a ganhar o mercado. Em contrapartida, associado às constantes variações em ambiente produtivo, está também o maior número de preparações e afinações das linhas de montagem, que fazem aumentar os tempos de inatividade e, consequentemente, os custos de produção. O presente relatório de estágio tem como objetivo a aplicação da metodologia SMED nas linhas de montagem da Grohe, uma empresa multinacional alemã, líder de mercado na produção de torneiras e componentes sanitários. Esta metodologia de 4 etapas, desenvolvida ao longo de meados do século XX por um consultor japonês, promove a redução dos tempos de setup através da otimização e coordenação das tarefas desenvolvidas por todos os intervenientes, sendo o seu principal objetivo a realização dos setups em apenas 10 minutos. Inicialmente foi definido um conjunto genérico de linhas de montagem manual, de forma a recolher uma amostra de tempos normalizada e realista, sob a qual foi aplicada a metodologia de uma forma conceptual. Posteriormente surgiria um conjunto de possíveis melhorias que, com maior ou menor sucesso, viriam a ser implementadas no dia-a-dia do departamento de montagem. Embora algumas das melhorias não tenham ficado totalmente finalizadas após a realização do presente estágio curricular, observou-se um impacto bastante significativo na coordenação de tarefas, principalmente da equipa de afinadores, responsável pela substituição e afinação dos equipamentos de montagem

Frictionless Innovative Slick® Process to Keep Track of Companies’ Knowledge

Processing and sharing knowledge is a common problem for any kind of company. Software companies, and more in general companies whose main business is based on continuous and innovative evolution in knowledge, this problem can be critical. Developing the Slick® methodology IdeaTech decided to face this problem using the A3 approach (Saad et al. in A3 thinking approach to support problem solving in lean product and process development, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, England [1]) to problem solving, with the aim of define a management process to all levels of knowledge and the different levels of knowledge awareness. We started analyzing the Unknown Unknown level—the situation in which people do not know what they not know, then we investigated the Known Unknown level—the situation in which awareness come to mind, even though the knowledge is still missing, than we studied the Known Known level—the situation in which one is aware of knowing. We finally describe a process to guide team members from a UU level to KK level and a methodology to track all the knowledge that reached the KK level using an efficient, frictionless, low-footprint process