Waste, lean concepts

Lean Concepts Opportunities for Safety Professionals Applied lean concepts are to eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and lower production costs. Elements of waste that should be addressed in the lean process are the direct and ancillary costs of accidents. This chapter Discusses the origin of lean concepts and how broadly they are being applied Gives examples of lean applications in which hazards and risks were not addressed Comments on the opportunity for effective involvement in lean initiatives by safety professionals and Outlines a unique merging of lean and safety through design concepts. An Addendum offers A Simplified Initial Value Stream Map To Identify Waste (Muda) and Opportunities for Continuous Improvement (Kaizen). 

Applying lean concepts to eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and lower production costs has become popular with senior-level managements. Minimizing waste is the foundation on which the lean concept is built. In a lean endeavor, activities or processes that consume resources, add cost, or require unproductive time without creating value are eliminated. The lean concept can be described as striving for excellence in operations in which each employee seeks to eliminate waste and participates in the smooth flow of value to the customer. 

Value Stream Mapping is the written or computer-based identification of the sequence of activities and information flows to produce a product or deliver a service. This represents a vital step in the lean concept because it provides the opportunity for team brainstorming to identify activities that do not add value. Lean practitioners use value stream mapping to identify major sources of non-value-added time in a value stream envision a less wasteful future state and develop an implementation plan for future lean activities. An Addendum providing a Simplified Initial Value Stream Map appears at the end of this chapter. 

Progressive safety professionals will recognize this shortcoming—the nonrecognition of accidents as a source of waste by the appliers of lean concepts—as an opportunity to educate management on the advantage of including safety considerations as the lean process is applied. 

Lean concepts are applied to reduce waste and accidents are a form of waste to be avoided. Guidance is given for safety professional as they become involved in lean applications for existing facilities and in the design processes. 

The second concept that needs to be reassessed and that needs to be integrated in conjunction with SCM is Lean. Lean is a tool that facilitates the elimination of waste. And waste can be identified in a multitude of resource areas. Any, and probably all, of the resource areas identified as part of the supply chain contain waste. Lean is the methodology that identifies the waste and then utilizes a bag of tools to attempt to eliminate this waste. The more waste that is eliminated, the greater the value-added time, resulting in greater throughput, lower costs. 

New Concept of Waste-Gas Capture during Viscose Staple Fiber Production. As a result of the basic chemical reactions in a sulfuric acid plant and the desired conversion of nearly 100%, the ratio of the quantity of combustion air to sulfur is fixed. If the entire amount of waste gas formed in a conventional viscose staple fiber plant were to be used as combustion air in a sulfuric acid plant, about 30 times as much sulfuric acid would have to be produced as the staple fiber plant consumes. The quantity of lean waste gas from the viscose plant must therefore first be matched to the much lower combustion air requirement of the sulfuric acid plant. This can be achieved by appropriate reduction of the air exhaustion in the viscose staple fiber plant. However, this is possible only if, at the same time, risks to safety as a result of exceeding the in-plant threshold limit value and of the occurrence of explosive gas-air mixtures are avoided. 

Many companies undertake training of employees in the concepts and tools shown in Table 24.1. Much of this time is wasted without application to a process improvement effort. Supply chain improvement efforts are a good way to introduce Design Team members to process documentation as part of lean. Six Sigma, Total Quality initiatives, or unlabeled efforts. Process documentation and analysis skill is the core competency for these initiatives. 

In addition, since this company has been a meticulous applier of the 5S system (defined in their usage as—Sorting, Simplification, Systematic Cleaning, Standardization, and Sustaining), its concepts are overriding in the lean process. It was said by a senior executive at the company location that If the staff has not been educated in 5S concepts and believe that their substance is a core value, you can forget about Lean. You must have established a stable environment in which waste elimination is fundamental to move into the next step to accomplish Lean. ... 

This Technical Report is an excellent resource for safety professionals who want to understand how the lean process and safety principles can be melded to serve waste reduction purposes while maintaining acceptable risk levels. It provides guidance from the initial concept stage for design and redesign and addresses operational waste reduction applications. 

In conclusion, the analyses and discussions refer to the conceptual framework, hypothesis, and concepts derived from the literature review to elucidate the significance of entrepreneurs responses and their relationship to the research outcomes. It is concluded emphatically that the SMEs entrepreneurs in manufactoring should focus on performance measurement related to lean manufacturing factors (product quality, process qualify, waste, defects, suppliers, work-in-process, output. 

Lean is a business model emphasizing the ehmination of waste while delivering quahty products or services at the least cost. When engineers must practice lean in the course of daily business, doors open for safety professionals to weigh in on issues related to risks to employees and the environment during concept and design of new products or process. 

Other safety professionals have recognized that literature on lean may not include the outcome of accidents as waste to be eliminated. Also, they have encountered situations where safety concepts and lean applications were in conflict, with the results being far from satisfactory. In that respect consider the comments made in a publication by the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) of ANSI B11.TR7 in 2007. Its title is ANSI Technical Report for Machines—Design for Safety and Lean Manufacturing. 

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