Tools and Techniques for Process Improvement in Lean Manufacturing Systems

Running head: MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS
Manufacturing Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Part A...............................................................................................................................................2
Part B.............................................................................................................................................13
Case Study: Performance Assessment of Manufacturing Plant................................................13
Introduction............................................................................................................................13
1. Business and site information............................................................................................13
2. Opportunities and benefits.................................................................................................14
3. Performance assessment....................................................................................................14
4. Performance index.............................................................................................................15
5. Possible improvement options based on the key performance indicators (KPI’s)............15
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................16
Part C.............................................................................................................................................17
1. What are the main advantages of cell design compared to typical mass production system?
...................................................................................................................................................17
2. Briefly explain Kaizen and continuous improvement...........................................................18
References......................................................................................................................................19

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Part A
1. Provide a review of Manufacturing Systems and the Key Performance Indicators
(KPI’s). Give your views whether the developments in Manufacturing Systems have
addressed the competitiveness issues.
Review of the Manufacturing Systems: Manufacturing is the branch of industry that
involves the application of various tools and processes that deals with the transformation of the
acquired raw materials and turning it into finished products. It deals mostly with the industrial
and engineering designing organization. Manufacturing system is the collection of various
arrangements and processes that is used for manufacturing a specific product as per the
requirement of an organization and their clients (Mourtzis, Fotia and Vlachou 2016) The
manufacturing system works according to the arrangements of the organization and it also
includes the accommodation of all the disturbances and problems that might occur in the process
of manufacturing. This system accommodates all the controllable factors and the systems that
would counteract the problems that would occur in the system of manufacturing the specific
products as per the organization and the clients. The problem can occur both from the side of the
clients as well as the organizations performing the manufacturing process. However, the
problems should also have a solution within the system to counter them.
Review of Key Performance Indicators or KPIs: The Key Performance Indicators or
KPIs can be defined as the values that can be measured for an organization to understand if an
organization can achieve its business objectives and how effectively the organization is
achieving its business objectives. The organizations mostly use the Key Performance Indicators
or the KPIs in various layers within the operations of the organizations to check whether they

3MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS
have been successful in achieving their targets and how these are happening at these levels of
operations (Wang and Chien 2016). The organizations also use high levels of KPIs to assess the
overall performance of an organization and the low level KPIs are used for the assessment of the
different departments and the employees involved within them, such as the sales department, the
marketing departments and others.
Views on the Manufacturing Systems and KPIs in addressing the competitiveness
issues: The way that Manufacturing Systems work has the potential to understand that there
might be various troubles regarding the entire system running within the organization and there
can be issues regarding the potential threats within the organization (Nguyen 2018). I have gone
through the various processes that the manufacturing organizations go through and I have
understood that there are potential that during the entire there can be various issues occurring
within the system that can raise issues in the system further affecting the organizations.
However, reviewing the Manufacturing System of an organization and the implementation of the
processes to counter attack the problems in the various levels of the manufacturing process, I can
say that the way by which the organizations use the Manufacturing System in solving the
occurring problems while manufacturing the required product. This adds to solving the issues as
well as has a competitive advantage over the other organizations without having a Manufacturing
System for the turning of the raw materials into finished products.
As per my personal observation, KPIs also add up in delivering competitive advantage
for an organization as the chief performance assessment technique. This is the way by which the
performances in the organization can be justified to be fulfilling to the needs of the organization
and in case there is any lack in the operations of the organizations in fulfilling the requirements
of the organization, the KPIs can be used to assess the lack (Mourtzis et al. 2018). On the basis

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of this lack, further steps can be added to make sure that the necessary steps are being taken to
fulfil the lacks that have been witnessed in the system.
2. Describe an approach which can be used to establish performance measures at the shop
floor level (Product/batch) production. Also explain how these measures can be
implemented in manufacturing companies to achieve the corporate objectives.
There are various approaches that are used to establish the performance measures at the
shop floor level for the product or batch production. One such approach is the networking
machinery that enables the organizations to retrieve the necessary information from the modern
manufacturing systems used. It has been found that even after all these, there has been issues
found in the systems that makes most of the information remain unused (Theorin et al. 2017).
This problem ensued further creates problems to have gaps in the assessment of performances as
all the necessary information can be taken into consideration while making the decisions when it
comes to the context of managing the operations of the organization. The reason why this
approach is still not considered as a feasible one as the information is only regarded as valuable
only when the information can be used to support the achievement for a production objective.
To support this issue, there have been various other approaches developed that would
support the establishment of the performance measures for the product or batch production at the
shop floor level. The new approaches formed the linkage between the information right from its
origin to make the user consider them as important. The way in which these approaches would
become much more effective is that they would integrate the information in a comprehensive
way to improve the performance of the manufacturing system. When these approaches are
applied correctly the information is made available which could be utilised for measuring the
performances. Since these approaches enhance the performance measures and enable the system

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to access the success or the failure of any particular manufacturing system within the
organisation they are termed as feasible. The existing performance measures and the Framework
is a four stage based approach which mostly focuses on the utilisation of the information to
improve shop floor data development. The approaches are visible because they are tested with in
the industrial environment. This approach is known as Line Information System Architecture or
LISA. The overall goal of this system architecture for the approach was to improve the
production system in various parts of the manufacturing process and their discrete parts with the
help of investigating the line information system and improve the available information and their
usage using this system.
This approach also advances to the strategic management of the entire system so that the
goals and the strategy of the organisation asset including the way the manufacturing system
woodwork in achieving these goals. On the shop floor, the manufacturing operations are most
probably executed and the decisions are made according to the performance of the
manufacturing system. The entire decision about the manufacturing operation management is
possible to be done on the one hand in line including the overall strategy through this approach.
at the same time on the other hand it enables the performance optimisation of the entire
manufacturing system with respect to the methodology adopted for the production of the raw
materials into the finished products (Goto et al. 2016). In this way the line information system
architecture can be implemented within the manufacturing companies as the measures taken at
the shop floor level for product or batch production and achieving the corporate objectives at the
same time.