Agility is often mentioned as a key to competitive advantage and business success. Agile approach is more commonly associated with computing, but it can also be referred to as a manufacturing methodology.
What is agile manufacturing all about and could your business benefit from it? This guide will explain the concept of agile manufacturing, the key elements of the method and provide you tips on how to implement an agile manufacturing plan for your organisation. Finally, we’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of this approach.
What is agile manufacturing?
Agile manufacturing is essentially about an approach a manufacturing company takes towards manufacturing products. It looks at the processes, tools and training the company is using in order to respond customer needs and market changes.
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While both lean and agile manufacturing can help companies lower costs, improve customer service and boost responsiveness, there are certain differences to these methodologies.
Lean manufacturing is focused on minimising the costs of manufacturing. The focus is therefore on demand-based manufacturing, which aims to eliminate investment in inventory. Lean manufacturing involves with improving the effective use of utilities, facilities and materials. The process is driven by the mindset that the processes can be constantly improved to make manufacturing more cost efficient. Therefore, lean manufacturing emphasises improvement and the measurement of performance.
You could view both models through the analogy of a person. One could be a thin person or one could be a fit person. These two are not the same thing, although a person can also be thin and fit. Similarly, an organisation can be a lean or an agile manufacturer, or the company could become
Flexibility: The basis of agile is to accommodate change as software related projects are constantly changing. If there were a change in market or the emergence of a new product, the product could be easily updated. It also enables new ideas and innovation to be implemented mid-project even after the scope has been defined.
Agile Methods (Schwalbe, 2014): This method involves the iterative flow of work and delivery of software in less iterations. Agile methods are used more for faster delivery of the project to the customer which considers the business benefits, quality of the product and
A LEAN Company is our best description and our business philosophy (creating more value for customers with less resources), which pursues to deliver what the customer wants, when they want it, at maximum value with minimum misuse.Through the application of LEAN, we achieve more fulfillment as it helps to reduce the possibility to constantly be fighting a battle against difficulties. Besides, we promote a Continuous Improvement Culture in our performance.
The lean principles respond to changing customer desires and also provide high quality, low cost and faster throughput times. Lean principles eliminate waste along entire value streams thus creating processes that require less human investment, time and effort to come up with products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects compared with conventional business systems.[1]
When comparing and contrasting waterfall and agile, they both use the same type of building blocks for the project: scope, cost, schedule and performance. They both also analyze, design, build, test, and deploy the requirement needed for the end result. The difference in these terms for each method is that when using waterfall for scope, cost, schedule, and performance, it sets the scope up front and then allows the cost, schedule, and performance to change depending on what is needed. An agile method will set the cost, schedule, and performance upfront and then have the scope vary, depending on what the company’s requests are after a working prototype. The waterfall is an iterative method meaning the next step cannot begin until the current one is completed. Once the current step is completed, it cannot be revised in anyway unless the project is scrapped and begin again. If the waterfall method is chosen, then the project team
According to Christopher and Towill (2001), there are mainly three ways to combine lean and leagile. The first hybrid approach is the Pareto rule, which means that the dominant 20% of products should use leanness and make to stock. While the remaining 80% products with less share of revenue should use agility. The second hybrid approach is about using lean approach for the base level of demand, while for the peak season or flexible demand, manufacturer can use agility
Before understanding the history of Lean Manufacturing I would like to explore its definition from several different perspectives and compare it to other philosophies, discussing its limitations and misconceptions.
Picture yourself walking into your local mechanic’s auto repair shop. As you approach it, you see tires in random places, there’s muffler hanging awkwardly on a shelf next to a car battery and you can’t distinguish between costumers and mechanics besides the fact that the person with oil spots on his clothes make for a clear give away. What’s your general impression? Do you think you feel comfortable leaving your car with this shop? I know I wouldn’t. My name is Art Garcia, today I will be telling you about the Five S step process of Lean manufacturing and how it can be applied to everything from organizations such as this local business or military unit or office.
The Benefits and the Possible Disadvantages of Lean Production Methods Being Utilised by an Aircraft Manufacturer
Lean production is an approach to production developed in Japan. Toyota, the Japanese car manufacturer was the company that invented lean production. The whole aim of lean production is to reduce the quantity of resources used up in production. By doing this, lean production uses less of - factory space, materials, stocks, suppliers, labour, capital and time. Lean production reduces costs, increases efficiency and output and improves motivation. Lean production involves using a range of practices designed to reduce waste and improve productivity and quality.
Agile development is chosen when the requirements are not clear. This is the reason that it is chosen for the projects where the rate of risk is high. Agile software development is best for the projects where the project can be divided in mini projects and these mini projects are completed by passing through the phase of design, coding and testing. The results of these iterations clear the requirements gradually. The feedback from the customers also clears the requirements. This is the reason that most of the companies use agile development methodology because of the fact that it has the capability to adapt to difficult situation and chase strict deadlines. Agile method is being used all over the software industry. Most of the developers are aware of the fact that Agile methodology is best for them.
Lean principles are customer centric, the companies those are already applying Lean methodologies with development models continually work with their customers to learn what customer need, the improvements and how new modules can be added designed and implemented to meet their needs. Lean principles are also called Six-sigma methods those not only reduce inefficiencies and waste, but also focus on continuous improvements (Raffo et al., 2010).
Lean manufacturing is an approach to manufacturing in which any resource spending that does not create value for the end customer is considered wasteful and should therefore be modified. Also this is considered “a theory that can help you to simplify and organize your working environment so that you can reduce waste, and keep your people, equipment, and workspace responsive to what’s needed right now.”( Lean Manufacturing) This explains how lean manufacturing can make the process of production more efficient. When it comes to lean manufacturing there are multiple principles that are apart of it. These Principles are the elimination of waste, continuous improvement, respect of humanity, levelized production, just-in-time production, and quality
According to Christopher and Towill (2001), there are mainly three ways to combine lean and leagile. The first hybrid approach is the Pareto rule, which means that the dominant 20% of products should use leanness and make to stock. While the remaining 80% products with less share of revenue should use agility. The second hybrid approach is about using lean approach for the base level of demand, while for the peak season or flexible demand, manufacturer can use agility
Industries plays a vital role in Indian economy, it has emerged as a very important tool in providing relatively larger employment after agriculture. Global markets are continuously changing and demanding product of high quality with marginal cost. Such products can be produced using lean manufacturing, a philosophy that aimed to reduce wastes of manufacturing at all levels, so as to reduce product cost. Lean is about generating more values for buyers by eliminating activities that are regarded waste. Any activity or process that consume resources, time or adds cost without creating any value becomes the target for elimination. Lean Manufacturing is an efficient way to identify and eliminate waste through continual improvement. Lean is all about doing things in