Applications of lean thinking: a briefing document

This report has been put together by the Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre (HaCIRIC) at the University of Salford for the Department of Health. The need for the report grew out of two main simple questions, o Is Lean applicable in sectors other than manufacturing? o Can the service delivery sector learn from the success of lean in manufacturing and realise the benefits of its implementation?The aim of the report is to list together examples of lean thinking as it is evidenced in the public and private service sector. Following a review of various sources a catalogue of evidence is put together in an organised manner which demonstrates that Lean principles and techniques, when applied rigorously and throughout an entire organization/unit, they can have a positive impact on productivity, cost, quality, and timely delivery of services

Simulation modelling and strategic change : creating the sustainable enterprise

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A survey of simulation techniques in commerce and defence

Despite the developments in Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools and techniques over the past years, there has been a gap in the M&S research and practice in healthcare on developing a toolkit to assist the modellers and simulation practitioners with selecting an appropriate set of techniques. This study is a preliminary step towards this goal. This paper presents some results from a systematic literature survey on applications of M&S in the commerce and defence domains that could inspire some improvements in the healthcare. Interim results show that in the commercial sector Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) has been the most widely used technique with System Dynamics (SD) in second place. However in the defence sector, SD has gained relatively more attention. SD has been found quite useful for qualitative and soft factors analysis. From both the surveys it becomes clear that there is a growing trend towards using hybrid M&S approaches

Cost reduction using process analysis in company PEGRES obuv s.r.o.

Firma PEGRES obuv s.r.o. se již delší dobu potýká se stagnací v oblasti plánování a řízení výroby. Některé podnikové procesy jsou nyní značně zastaralé a v aktuálních podmínkách již neefektivní. Cíl práce je snížení nákladů s využitím procesní analýzy. Pro dosažení tohoto cíle bude provedena analýza současného stavu zastaralých procesů a budou popsány vybrané metody řízení výroby, které jsou svou povahou relevantní pro výrobu obuvi. Výstupem práce je sada doporučení a návrhů na změny v existujících procesech. Vybrané návrhy budou v prostředí firmy implementovány a práce zahrne zhodnocení výsledků po zavedení těchto změn.Company PEGRES obuv s.r.o. has been long time struggling with stagnation in production planning and control. Some of the internal processes are now obsolete and in current conditions no longer effective. The goal of the paper is to reduce the costs using process analysis. To achieve this goal, analysis of the current state of outdated processes will be performed, followed by description of selected methods of production management, which by their nature are relevant to the production of the shoes. Output of the work is a set of recommendations and proposals for changes to existing processes. Selected proposals will be implemented in the company and paper will include evaluation of results after the implementation of these changes.

Towards a business model for sustainable supply chain management

Designers make decisions that ultimately impact on both the economic, environmental and social performance of the products and process, and many of these costs and impacts occur across the supply chain. This paper aims to show initials elements of a research which aims to develop an integrated business model for sustainable supply chain management in order to facilitate the business management process in terms of assessment of suppliers and collaboration addressed to the sustainable improvements across supply chain. It is noteworthy that it is an imperative in the current competitive market that companies must be able to manage their entire production chain taking into account sustainable issues as an important factor in their decision processes. Therefore, it is believed that this model can integrate and strengthen a company’s functions and assist its decision processes as well as implement improvements within its supply chain

Practices for strategic capacity management in Malaysian manufacturing firms

While the notion of manufacturing capabilities is a long-standing notion in research on operations management, its actual implementation and management has been hardly researched. Five case studies in Malaysia offered the opportunity to examine the practice of manufacturing managers with regard to strategic capability management. The data collection and analysis was structured by using the notion of Strategic Capacity Management. Whereas traditionally literature has demonstrated the beneficial impact of an appropriate manufacturing strategy on the business strategy and performance, the study highlights the difficulty of managers to set the strategy, let alone implementing it. This is partly caused by the immense pressure of customers in these dominantly Make-To-Order environments for SMEs. Current concepts for manufacturing capabilities have insufficiently accounted this phenomenon and an outline of a research agenda is presented