TECH FRONT That’s a challenge, particularly if you want to measure the
degree of lean implementation across a larger enterprise. With all of the variables that go into maintaining and growing a lean manufacturing environment, is there really a way to benchmark progress across a large facility? How about an entire enterprise? Sounds implausible but how about entire country’s industry? Anita Susilawati, John Tan, David Bell, and Mohammed
Sarwar, all of the Department of Mechanical & Construction Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Nor- thumbria University (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK), say that yes, there is—and they’ve used a novel method to measure the leanness of Indonesia’s manufacturing industry. Susilawati et al. describe their approach in a Journal of Manufacturing Systems feature, “Fuzzy Logic Based Method to Measure Degree of Lean Activity in Manufacturing Indus- try.” The authors recognize the complexity of their task, which they say arises due to “the inherent multidimensional concept of leanness,” lack of a manufacturing-practice database that can be used to benchmark, and the fact that subjective hu-
man opinion—with its variances in bias and knowledge—are an unavoidable part of the evaluators’ baggage. In their paper, they identify 66 lean parameters and base a
degree-of-lean-implementation score on value stream map- ping, with the length of the implementation of lean practices considered in the scoring. They also model the vagueness of subjective human judgment with a “fuzzy number.” Results from “an initial survey from a sample of respondents from the manu- facturing industry in Indonesia” illustrate the potential strength of their method. Read more at
http://tinyurl.com/JMS-lean. Tech Front is edited by Senior Editor Michael Anderson
Tech Front welcomes your manufacturing research-related news releases: Please email them to Tech Front editor Michael Anderson at
manderson@sme.org.
SME’s authoritative peer-reviewed research journals, Journal of Manufacturing Processes, Journal of Manufacturing Systems, and Manufacturing Letters, and technical papers may be reached via
www.sme.org/publications. The journals welcome submissions: Information available at
www.sciencedirect.com/sme.
REALTRAC is a manufacturing software solution for make-to-order manufacturers and Job Shops. Our software helps companies who are:
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AdvancedManufacturing.org | October 2015
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