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Keywords
Lean manufacturing, Wastes relationships, Performance metrics, Trade-offs, Decision making
1. Introduction
Lean manufacturing emphasizes value creation by eliminating waste. Waste is non-value added activities that contribute to product cost for which the customer is unwilling to pay. Eliminating waste can reduce product cost and
improve quality, but it is not possible to uproot waste completely even in an efficient system whose operations are
waste-dependent (that is, has waste as a part of its functionality). It is necessary to understand the waste relationships in order to minimize system waste to the lowest possible level.
Lean manufacturing is the practice of a theory of production that considers the expenditure of resources for any
means other than the creation of value for the presumed customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination [17]. In lean manufacturing, seven wastes have been defined as [1]:
Overproduction (production ahead of demand)
Defects (any product / service that the customer is unwilling to accept)
Transportation (moving products that are not actually required to perform the processing)
Waiting (any resources / materials staying idle)
Inventory (all components, work-in-progress and raw materials not being processed)
Motion (people or equipment moving more than is required to transform the material)
Processing (Unnecessary / Over-processing than minimum processing for the material transformation).
It is not possible to eliminate waste completely in a system that has waste as the part of its functionality. In other
words, for many systems a minimum amount of waste is necessary for it to perform its intended function. These
systems are referred to as waste-dependent system in this paper. Since complete waste elimination is not possible,
waste can only be brought down to a point where the system exhibits Pareto optimality. Pareto optimality is a term
used in economics and design for describing a solution to a system with multiple objectives whereby no part of the
solution can be improved without making some other part worse [8]. A manufacturing system that is Pareto optimal
will be referred to henceforth as an efficient waste-dependent system. To improve upon these systems, work tasks
within the production system must be redesigned to achieve functionality without the waste.
To achieve a waste-dependent efficient system, the relationship between wastes must be understood. Wastes relationships must therefore be measured quantitatively. Feld [9] defines a manufacturing metric as a standard measure
that describes a performance criterion for manufacturing process so that everyone in the organization is working
towards the same goal. An attempt has been made to identify a set of metrics that can quantitatively measure different wastes. However, not all metrics in the existing literature fulfill the requirements of this paper, so several metrics
have been proposed to provide the information necessary to understand the waste relationships.
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In summary, this paper proposes a waste relationship model to facilitate trade-off decision making with the objective
of reducing all wastes to the minimum possible level in an efficient waste-dependent system without jeopardizing its
intended functionality. Moreover, this paper identifies, develops, and integrates a set of metrics, determines the
waste relationship, and statistically verifies the proposed waste relationship in a simple manufacturing system.
2. Methodology
A three-step methodology was followed for this work. First, the literature on Lean manufacturing was reviewed to
define wastes and explore potential metrics. Second, the logical relationship between wastes was mapped using concept mapping and a relationship model was developed. And third, the model was statistically tested using discrete
event simulation to determine the correlation between the wastes. The review of current research in Lean manufacturing identified wastes and metrics that have been developed, and identified a few holes in the existing research.
Next, the concept mapping was selected to assimilate the relationships between wastes, as it is a powerful technique
for the graphical representation of knowledge [10]. Moreover, it is a technique helpful for understanding relationships concepts (in this case, an identified waste) with other concepts (other wastes). Finally, several simple manufacturing systems were modeled in the Arena simulation software, and their measures of waste were analyzed in the
statistical software package MiniTAB.
3. Metrics
Metrics for measuring waste in manufacturing systems should be easy to collect and simple to understand. To be
useful to decision making processes in manufacturing industries metrics must be feasible for collection on a real,
dynamic manufacturing shop floor. In addition, the number of metrics should be kept to a minimum in order to keep
data collection costs as low as possible and to minimize the time necessary to understand what is happening in the
system [11]. According to Baines [12], resource activities are cost drivers. In other words, as the number of metrics
increases, information collection increases, and it in turn increases the activity cost drivers. Many manufacturing
performance metrics can be identified in the research literature, but not many are both feasible and simple.
There are many performance metrics available that were developed by various researchers in different contexts like
Lean manufacturing, Total Productive Maintenance, or Theory of Constraints. Unfortunately many of these metrics
cannot be used directly to measure shop floor performance. For instance, some metrics are too general (provide
global measurements), require over-complicated calculations (e.g. Dock-to-Dock [13]), or require the collection of
historical data (e.g. machine reliability). In some cases, metrics are better suited for computer simulation models
than direct shop floor measurements, e.g. Build-To-Schedule [13]. Additionally, some shop floor performance metrics provide superfluous or redundant information and make things look unnecessarily complex.
Many metrics found in the literature, particularly for measuring shop floor performance, dont satisfy the above requirements. For example, Duque et al. [14] aimed to integrate a set of metrics proposed by different authors for
measuring shop floor performance in such a way that they are consistent with the different stages and elements of
Lean manufacturing implementation. Some of the metrics they identified and developed are WIP, Setup time, Machine downtime, Transportation, and Space Utilization. These metrics only measure a few wastes and werent developed with a minimum metric set objective in mind. Rother & Shook [15] developed a set of metrics for Value
Stream Mapping (VSM) to characterize and model the shop floor. However, even VSM, developed based on Lean
manufacturing concepts, fails to capture Transportation, Waiting (Operator, Machine & Material), Motion, and
Processing wastes. Practical and feasible shop floor metrics from VSM include Defects and Inventory. Chuan et al.
[16] identifies a good Processing metric. From the metrics identified in the literature, only Defects and Processing
fulfill the above requirements. Therefore metrics are required for Inventory (WIP, WH), Overproduction, Waiting
(Machine, Operator, Customer, and Material), Motion, and Transportation. Table A in the appendix summarizes the
metrics found in the literature.
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Table 1: Waste metrics table
Waste Code
Waste
Metric
Comment
Inventory Warehouse
Inventory Work in
Progress
Over-Production
Transportation
Waiting
(Machine)
Waiting
(Operator)
Motion
Waiting
(Customer)
Defects
1
1
% Utilization
1-%Operator
Saturation
See [17]
,
See [16]
Processing
K
F Transportation Frequency; FI Finished Inventory; MCi ith Machining Center or Work Station; n Number of Machines, Buffers, or Workers; P Total Units Produced Si Scrap from the ith Machining Center; T
Total Time; Tm Time spent in motion; TRi ith Machine Operation Time; Tt Transportation Time; Tw Idle
or Waiting Time; WIP Work in Progress Inventory; WH Warehouse Inventory.
particular manufacturing processes and is not related to the other wastes except Defects (as Processing increases, the
Defects are reduced). Rawabdeh [4] also has similar views on the Processing waste.
It is desirable to have a single simple, feasible metric that can provide, at least to some degree, a measure of all
wastes in the manufacturing system. This metric would reveal critical information about the whole systems performance. Therefore, a center point metric is proposed that can give systematic insight into the system waste. From
an examination of the logical connections between wastes in the concept map, two candidate metrics present themselves, WIP, measuring inventory waste, and Customer Waiting Time, representing a particular kind of waiting
waste. WIP is directly coupled to WIP Waiting Waste, Transportation Waste, and Waiting (Machine) waste since
all of these wastes directly require material flow. This is also true to a lesser degree with the other wastes. Since
production control is pull, the customer triggers the production of their order, and thereby any waste in the system
should have a high correlation with their wait.
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with large batch sizes. Production control is a pull system with the transporter and other system resources triggered
by the finished goods inventory level. The transporter moves small batches from the warehouse to the work in
process buffer. Then, the work stations pick the parts from their respective WIP buffers and processes them. Operator 1 loads, unloads, and transfers parts between work station 1, 2, and 3, and operator 2 controls work stations 4 and
5. Finally, the customer consumes from the finished goods inventory.
W2
TR
B2, V1, D1, S1
WH
WS 1
WS 2
CT1, S2, A1
CT2, S3, A2
W1
O1
W3
W5
WS 5
WS 4
WS 3
CT5, S6, A5
CT4, S5, A4
CT3, S4, A3
FI
ROP2
W4
O2
Demand rate
CU
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Table 2: Linear correlation coefficients between wastes (p-values: *<0.01; **<0.05; ***<0.1)
Correlation
Coefficients
A
-------0.63*
-0.67*
-0.75*
0.15
0.36*
0.34*
-0.67*
-0.62*
-0.77*
0.90*
0.86*
0.91*
-0.90*
-0.86*
-0.91*
-0.90*
-0.86*
-0.90*
0.90*
0.86*
0.90*
-0.84*
-0.83*
-0.87*
0.33*
0.45*
0.49*
-------0.72*
-0.62*
-0.53*
0.79*
0.76*
0.81*
-0.48*
-0.68*
-0.81*
0.49*
0.69*
0.81*
0.48*
0.69*
0.80*
-0.49*
-0.69*
-0.80*
0.84*
0.82*
0.87*
-0.30*
-0.29*
-0.38*
-------0.38*
-0.37*
-0.38*
-0.086
0.23**
0.29*
0.075
-0.23**
-0.30*
0.075
-0.22**
-0.29*
-0.064***
0.24**
0.29*
-0.54*
-0.62*
-0.60*
0.10
-0.079
0.064
-------0.58*
-0.71*
-0.87*
0.58*
0.71*
0.86*
0.58*
0.70*
0.86*
-0.58*
-0.71*
-0.86*
0.70*
0.73*
0.86*
-0.29*
-0.31*
-0.46*
-------0.995*
-0.997*
-0.998*
-0.994*
-0.997*
-0.994*
0.993*
0.996*
0.997*
-0.78*
-0.89*
-0.93*
0.37*
0.55*
0.53*
------0.998*
0.999*
0.995*
-0.997*
-0.998*
-0.999*
0.79*
0.89*
0.94*
-0.38*
-0.53*
-0.52*
-------0.997*
-0.997*
-0.995*
0.79*
0.89*
0.93*
-0.37*
-0.53*
-0.51*
-------0.88*
-0.90*
-0.94*
0.37*
0.52*
0.51*
-------0.34*
-0.39*
-0.44*
6. Conclusion
The relationship between wastes in efficient, waste-dependent lean manufacturing systems has been examined in
this paper. Metrics that are simple and feasible to measure on the shop floor have been proposed, and Customer
Waiting Time waste has been identified as a center point metric which is an important performance measure of responsive production systems. Correlations between wastes accumulated over a short period (two weeks) were demonstrated to have trade-offs in discrete event simulations. Therefore, it is concluded that the relationship between
wastes is strong enough to aid shop floor decision making in Lean manufacturing. In future work, it is suggested that
financial waste metrics be developed and their relationship verified using simulation. Additionally, the waste relationships should be verified in a real dynamic manufacturing environment.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the support of Auto21 Canadian Network Centres of Excellence, and the University of Calgary.
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Appendix
Metrics
Reference
Dock-to-Dock (DTD)
[13]
[13]
WIP Inventory
[14]
Setup time
[14]
Machine downtime
[14]
Transportation
[14]
Space Utilization
How much area does the line need, including its WIP and tools etc
[14]
WIP Inventory
[15]
Overproduction rate
[15]
Defects
% Scrap
[15]
[16]
[16]
[20]
[20]
[20]
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