Challenges and success factors for implementation of lean manufacturing in European SMES

Small and medium-sized enterprises are crucial to value creation in the European economy. The SMEs need continuous improvement initiatives to stay competitive. However, SMEs are less likely to implement lean practices compared to larger companies. Limited research exists on the factors that are vital for succeeding with Lean implementations in SMEs. A case study of Norwegian and Belgium SMEs has been conducted in the European research project ERIP (European Regions for Innovative Productivity). Six critical success factors are suggested, which correspond well with previous research: 1) Ensure strong management involvement. 2) Develop thorough employee participation. 3) Allocate sufficient time for preparing the organisation. 4) Focus on creating motivation to complete initiatives. 5) Build competence internally in the organisation. 6) Establish a performance evaluation system

Alternative line delivery strategies support a forklift free transition in a high product variety environment

Forklift transport fails when it comes to efficiency. As a result, more and more attention is going to alternative transport systems that automate or further structure the material flow; such as line deliveries by train and conveyor technology. Only substituting the transport system itself is not cost-effective. The resulting improvements are rather low compared to the high investment cost. Therefore, in this paper alternative material flow and line delivery strategies are taken into consideration. Within a high product variety environment a combination of materials kitting and line stocking is proposed. This approach has some important benefits on top of the pure forklift free transition. A basic model is constructed to calculate the kitting area and transport system requirements. A truck assembly company is used as case study. A feasibility study is carried out, to give a rough indication of the cost-effectiveness of the model

A new engineering approach to predict the hydrostatic strength of uPVC\ud pipes

Extruded unplasticised Poly(Vinyl Chloride) (uPVC) pipes are certified using pressurised pipe tests.\ud During these tests the pipes are subjected to a certain temperature and internal pressure, while the\ud time-to-failure, the time at which the internal pressure drops due to rupture or fracture, is measured.\ud These tests are time consuming and are therefore costly. To circumvent these costs a model-based\ud approach is proposed where the time-to-failure is predicted. The input parameters for this approach\ud can be determined using short term measurements. The approach uses the observation that the timeto-\ud failure kinetics of uPVC pipes subjected to an internal pressure is independent of the type of failure\ud mode (ductile, semi-ductile or brittle). This supports our statement that the underlying mechanism\ud that initiates failure is similar for these types of failure. Local deformation of the material up to a\ud critical value of the anelastic strain is believed to determine the start of failure of the material. This\ud critical strain appears to be constant for the testing conditions used during this study. A pressure\ud modified Eyring expression is employed to calculate the strain rate resulting from the applied stress\ud at a certain temperature. The time-to-failure follows from the calculated strain rate and the critical\ud strain of the material. This approach has been verified against literature data and shown to hold\ud quantitatively. Furthermore, the model seems to hold for different processing conditions