Mabry Castings has successfully adopted the principles and philosophies of lean manufacturing. This has resulted in excellent lead times, excellent total quality, and very competitive pricing.
Lean is basically all about getting the right things, to the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity while minimizing waste and being flexible and open to change. More importantly, all of these concepts have to be understood, appreciated, and embraced by the actual employees who build the products and therefore own the processes. The cultural aspect of lean is just as important as the actual tools or methodologies. |
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Lean focuses on the reduction of seven wastes
to improve overall customer value: |
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Transportation |
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Inventory |
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Motion |
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Waiting time |
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Over-production |
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Processing Itself |
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Defects and Scrap |
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| Key lean manufacturing principles include: |
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Pull processing - products are pulled from the consumer end (demand), not pushed from the production end (supply) |
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Perfect first-time quality - quest for zero defects, revealing and solving problems at the source |
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Waste minimization - eliminating all activities that do not add value, and maximizing use of scarce resources (capital, people and land) |
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Continuous improvement - improving quality, increasing productivity and information sharing |
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Flexibility - producing different mixes or greater diversity of products quickly, without sacrificing efficiency at lower volumes of production |
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Building and maintaining a long term relationship with suppliers through collaborative risk sharing, cost sharing and information sharing arrangements |
