Dr. Adel Younis Quality consultant

Quality Tip

The main concern: Just in time & Lean manufacturing

My approach in this quality tip is not to explain the idea or philosophy of JIT, or LM,

cause of the enormous number of reference and books published for that purpose

in particular, with a punch of quality and Business management leaders all over the

world, however, in this quality tip, I’ll tend to discuss and demonstrate simply, why

we’re in Egypt and under the current circumstances and conditions will not be apple

to apply or implement the JIT, or LM Models, at any of our business organizations,,,

This prospective or writing a quality tip, “with a little dark vision” – which is not by

the way my style of explaining any of the quality management mysteries- based on

the complexity of the mentioned models, or to its sophisticated requirements, its

actually most related to , our own Egyptian culture, attitude and behavior,,,

It is not a matter of mentality that can digest understanding such models, it is well

known already the Egyptian mentality of applying and getting useful of a lot of

models and systems in many variety of fields , but again , the models mentioned

above is mainly related to - as will be explained and demonstrated after – to human

contribution and reflex , which means that it is again, depends on the human

factor,,,

Back to mu quality tip, in order to proof my point of view, first I’ll try to

demonstrate the meaning, requirements, and usage of both JIT, LM, then and

through my notes, and texts, it will be clear to all viewers the main reasons of my

chocking opinion,,,

In the beginning , we should start from the definition of JIT / LM , as a business

term , it defined according to the APICS dictionary as:

“ a philosophy of manufacturing based on planned elimination of all waste, and

continuous improvement of productivity, it encompasses the successful execution of

all manufacturing activities required to produce a final product, from design

engineering to delivery including all states of conversion from raw material on

word”

Dr. Adel Younis Quality consultant

From the above “ little long definition”, simply it seems that this model is related to

manufacturing businesses, aiming to improve its productivity levels, but, as I’ll

demonstrate later on, it is already applied in many service provision organization as

successful as in the manufacturing firms, as such organizations adapt their working

systems to meet the requirements of the model.

JIT, and LM, normally get many other terms, expressing almost the same meaning

, it is called Continuous flow manufacturing in IBM, Stockless production in Hewlett

– Packard, Management by sight like in General Electric, and Short cycle

manufacturing in Motorola,

Reviewing all of the above mentioned expressions tends to give a primary

impression of the model that it mainly re-designs, re-structure the manufacturing

process, so that, it save time of production, and decrease waste due to its

activities.

Preparation to introduce JIT, to an organization.

JIT, just like any other model, doesn’t come free to any organization , certain

changes in the organization must occur before getting the benefit of applying the

system in place , among changes are:

1) Stabilized production schedules

2) Increased production capacity

3) Improved product quality

4) Team training programs

5) Reduced equipment’s break downs

6) Mutual beneficial relationship with suppliers.

In order to understand how such changes can be conducted in place and can be

planned from the beginning, so that, transferring any manufacturing style of any

organization will be changed to JIT models, we, have to understand the needed

elements for JIT to be applied,

In regular situations, it takes very long details to explain these requirements , but,

I’ll try to brief these requirements as follows :

1) Eliminating waste:

It targets the elimination of waste of all kinds to its least amount can be achieved,

Japanese authorities identified the main wastes in production to be eliminated as “

- Overproduction , work only what is needed now

- Waiting, coordinate flow diagrams between operations

Dr. Adel Younis Quality consultant

- Transportation, design facility layouts that reduces or eliminate material

handling and shipment.

- Work-in-process inventories, eliminate or reduce step up times

- Motion and efforts, eliminating decreasing human motion as possible

- Defective product, eliminating of defective product.

2) Enforce problem solving and continuous improvement

This element mainly dealing with production workers “ operators”, by giving them

the authority and power to take some necessary decisions during work, in some

cases, may reach the level of stopping production, if needed”, in case of finding any

problem related to product quality or specification, in organizations applying the

JIT, model for a while can reach the level of encouragement of workers to reduce in

process inventories a step further to see if any production problems occur.

3) Total quality management.

As every one in the organization is involved in JIT and committed to produce a

perfect product every time, which is typical the main concept of TQM.

4) Parallel processing

Whenever possible, it is required to merge , exploit, parallel processing, instead of

consequent typical production methods, however, to reach such purpose,

organizations may be subjected to layout redesign, product redesign,,,,etc.

5) KanBan production control.

To understand the KIT elements of control, we’ve first to differentiate between push

and pull production systems, in the 1st one workers look at the schedule to

determine what to produce next, but in the in the pull system, workers look only on

the next stage of production, and determine what is needed in this particular stage

only, then they prepare all needed items , materials , ….etc. for this purpose, and

produce it, which leads to not having any production batches stored in inventory, it

is rather goes to downstream stages directly.

JIT, is a typical pull system, some control measures are needed to be applied to

control the coordination of pull system, so that, production steps are followed by

the next one, with only a prior request from the receiving stage.

Such step can be done, by using a signaling system to communicate between work

stations, so that it begins to produce only when signaled by the later stage, this

signal system is called Kan Ban cards, or Kan ban production control

6) JIT purchasing ,

Dr. Adel Younis Quality consultant

JIT, as a management control system for manufacturers mainly , it depends mainly

on providing the needed production items, materials, tools ….etc. at the point of

use, only at the time of use.

This approach requires by mandate, a perfect purchased materials / items, which

can be achieved by applying a well-designed supplier qualification program, which

can simply summarized in the following steps:

- Restructuring relationship with suppliers, to be more cooperative, “ Japanese

call suppliers a co-producer”

- Developing a long term business relationship with suppliers, supported by

long term contracts.

- Developing not only, price, quality and delivery time checking parameters

with the supplier, but as well mutual beneficial business relationship.

- Extending JIT model to supplier entity.

- Choosing as possible and appropriate nearby located supplies.

- Delivering shipment to production lines directly.

- Small, standard in size shipment

- A near perfect in quality approach in delivering items.

7) Step-up reduction,

As mentioned in the previous element of JIT, it is needed to have in place a small

size of production, and decrease level of inventory, which by default will need to “

result in “ elevated rate of production lines, machines step-up, however, the JIT to

redesign all possible production parameters, line machines, procedures, even

product, so that it achieve the minimum limit possible of set ups.

Setup reduction is continuous process in JIT and aiming, it is important to get

workers involved at each workstation in it, in order to reach the best ideas and best

time for set ups.

8) Repetitive manufacturing

It is defined in the APICS dictionary as

“ the repeated production of the same discrete or family of products” , where

repetitive methodology minimizes set ups, inventory, and manufacturing lead

times.

Dr. Adel Younis Quality consultant

This approach leads to decrease the human factor / error, to its least levels, at

which, as long as the production steps are repeated in routine “ systematic”,

pattern, number of errors decreased.

The above mentioned items “ elements” of JIT, model, summarizes the needed

requirements to have an effective system employed in place, such system is

employed in a large number of organizations, and in an elevated number of

countries, because of its benefits, which can be summarized as follows:

- Inventory levels are drastically reduced

- Production time is greatly reduced

- Production quality improved

- Taken spaces, capacity of production facility effectively used

- Production times becomes streamline problem free.

After reviewing all of the above mentioned system description , and demonstration ,

it seems that the system mainly concerns the following two main topics :

1) It is a model of management, depends on organizations decision makes, and

top M. commitment, the system needs, by providing the needed resources to

its implementation, and knowing that Egyptian organizations lack of this type

of leaders, welling not only, to take such decisions, but as well, to pay its

costs.

2) Most of the elements depends on the human factor , meaning the people

involvement , and as well known in Egypt . any people related factor will be

subjected to many circumstances and under the recent factors will be

subjected to opinions and ideas of each worker individually , which will for

sure affect the feasibility of applying the system.