Michel Baudin, Crispin Vincenti-Brown and Hormoz Mogarei gave a one-day seminar on "The four dimensions of JIT/leam production" to 95 APICS members at MCC in Austin, TX, on 5/7/97. The companies represented included Applied Materials, Eaton, EMC Test Systems, Grant Thornton, and Dell Computer.
After an overview of the scope, historical background, and underlying principles of JIT/lean production, Crispin Vincenti-Brown described its engineering dimension, and in particular the range of actions that managers, engineers and shop floor operators take to ensure that equipment, materials, tooling, programs, and instructions are available at the point of use -- making the work "workable." Engineering the shop floor for JIT/lean production entails setting up cells and flow lines, reducing setup times, mistake-proofing operations and working out many other details. The goal was to give this audience of production controllers an appreciation for the extent of the technical improvements to shop floor operations at the foundation of JIT/lean production.
The discussion of logistics by Michel Baudin, started from the physical organization of materials movements and the application of such principles as regular delivery routes or balancing parts supply method between kitting and lineside supply, and went on to describe production planning/scheduling methods based on takt times, daily going rates, sequencing methods and Kanbans. A focus of discussion was how the use of MRP data in JIT/lean production for forecasting and estimation differs from -- and improve on -- its traditional use as a driver for shop floor decisions.
After a lunch catered in the MCC cafeteria, Hormoz Mogarei shared his experience of leading a multi-ethnic, unionized production team in the automotive parts industry through multiple cycles of improvement, to the point of earning praise from Toyota executives and the attention of case study writers from Harvard Business School. The audience was particularly interested in his approach to the training of the work force and first-line management, and in the mode of operation of the Kaizen teams that have been at the core of the JIT/lean production implementation effort.
Finally, the speakers joined in a panel to discuss the performance management and accountability aspects of JIT/lean production, including the a priori evaluation of shop floor improvement projects, their validation after implementation, the on-going monitoring of overall performance on the shop floor, and the measurement of the impact of JIT/lean production on global business performance.
Special thanks are due to the APICS volunteers, particularly Ken Laird and Paul Linden, for doing such an outstanding job of making the seminar go through without a hitch.