Essential Foundation for Implementing Job Shop Lean

Designing a facility layout that facilitates delay-free material flow in an HMLV factory is the essential foundation for Job Shop Lean.  Kiyoshi Suzaki, who consulted for Toyota, has devoted an entire chapter (Chapter 4 Developing Flow on the Production Floor) in his book[1].  Quoting from his book “The importance of factory layout has not been addressed in spite of the significant waste often associated with badly planned layouts.  The impact on a company’s performance from improving the layout can be substantial.  Flow refers to the movement of material through the plant.  It assumes that material will not be stagnant at any point in time from the receiving of raw material to the shipping of finished products.  Problems such as a process-oriented layout (Functional Layout), line imbalance, machine breakdowns, long setup or tool-change time, machine breakdown, quality problems, and labor absenteeism cause interruptions that disrupt a steady flow of production in a factory”.  Therefore, any HMLV (high-mix low-volume) manufacturer seeking to implement Job Shop Lean should invest in re-design of their factory from the ground up in order to achieve delay-free material flow in their factory. 


Software to Design Factory Layouts for Flow

So how does a high-mix low-volume (HMLV) manufacturer, especially a job shop, go about it doing this?  The answer is surely not by using pencil-and-paper methods like Value Stream Mapping and Spaghetti Diagrams!  Here is a sample of software tools that I have found useful to implement different Job Shop Lean projects:

ProjectCommercial Software to Execute This Project
Value Stream MappingeVSM MixFlexSimMinitab WorkspaceSimul8
Time and Motion Studyema Work DesignerProPlannerTimer ProOTRS10
Part Family FormationJMPMinitabPFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit)
Factory Layoutema Plant DesignerFlow PlannerLAYOUT-IQPFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit)SIMOGGAVisual ComponentsvisTABLE
Process and System SimulationFlexSimSimioSimul8Visual Components
Master SchedulingIntuiflow Protected Flow ManufacturingSimio DDMRP (Demand Driven MRP)
Production Planning and Inventory ControlFactory Physics CSUITE
Finite Capacity SchedulingLEKIN (Academic Scheduling System)ORTEMSOpCenterSchedlyzerTactic
Machine Monitoring and Manufacturing Execution SystemsFactoryWizHarmoniMachineMetricsMerlinPlex MES

Re-Tooling your ERP System to Support Job Shop Lean

If an HMLV manufacturer has the appropriate data captured in their ERP system, each of the three major steps to implement Lean in high-mix low-volume (HMLV) environments could be implemented using some of the software tools listed above as follows:

  1. Map the value stream: Part families can be formed using the Cluster Analysis module in any commercial statistical analysis package such as Minitab or PFAST (Production Flow Analysis and Simplification Toolkit).
  2. Create flow: A variety of factory layouts and detailed layouts of individual cells can be designed using a combination of PFAST, Flow Planner, visTABLE and SIMIO
  3. Establish pull: The controlled release of orders into production subject to finite capacity constraints could be done using FPCSUITE.  And, the detailed scheduling and sequencing of orders at individual work centers could be done using a Finite Capacity Scheduler (FCS) like Opcenter, Plataine or Tactic.

[1] Suzaki, K. (1988). The new manufacturing challenge: Techniques for continuous improvement.  New York, NY: The Free Press.