Lean Management “Quick-Wins”: Results of Implementation. A Case Study

Abstract

Purpose: This study comprised two main goals. The first goal demonstrates how LT (Lean Tools) allows the highest impact during the implementation phase.The second goal consisted of introducing procedure changes based on the Management of Human Resources through Lean Leadership tool. The target for these two objectives is to achieve an increase of 5% in machine occupancy rate and a reduction of 10% regarding the costs of defective products per hour.Methodology/Approach: The research methodology is a Action-Research/Research-Action developed by Professor Kurt Lewin of MIT that goes through cycles of five stages: Diagnosis; Planning; Implementation; Evaluation, Conclusions.Findings: Regarding the two objectives above mentioned, it was observed an increase of 8.5% in machine occupancy rate and a reduction of 27.9% regarding the costs per hour of defective products. It was created an additional motivation in the employees and very satisfying results in every production. Research Limitation/implication:The study is limited to a Portuguese Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) in the metalworking sector.Originality/Value of paper: Lean tools can be rapidly and easily implemented and quickly understood by the workers. With that implementation, the occupation of the machines has increased and the defects and their costs have decreased, so the added value grows.

Environmental management system according toISO14001:2015 as a driver to sustainable development

“…On the business side, the centrality in the global debate of the concept of “sustainable” has meant that the environmental management of production processes became a critical success factor in order to compete on the market. In fact, if recently the green character was a peculiarity of some organization particularly sensitive to environmental issues, today it becomes a crucial aspect for business competitiveness (Baek, 2018; Lee, Noh, Choi, & Rha, 2017; Riaz & Saeed, 2019; Santos, Rebelo, Lopes, Alves, & Silva, 2016), in a world looking for new business (Bravi, Murmura, & Santos, 2017; Félix, Gonçalves, Jimenez, & Santos, 2019) where customers are very demanding (Bravi, Murmura, & Santos, 2018; Santos, Murmura, & Bravi, 2018b) in search of value (Costa, Barbosa, Santos, & Alves, 2019; Santos et al, 2018; Santos et al, 2019) and product quality (Araújo, Santos, Costa, & Sá, 2019; Rodrigues, Sá, Ferreira, Silva, & Santos, 2019; Sá, Amaral, Barreto, Carvalho, & Santos, 2019; Santos, Ferreira Rebelo, Doiro, & Santos, 2017; Santos, Murmura, & Bravi, 2018b; Santos, Murmura, & Bravi, 2019; Vieira et al, 2019; Zgodavova, Hudec, & Palfy, 2017).…”

New Needed Quality Management Skills for Quality Managers 4.0

“…To be competitive, today's companies must manufacture products of the highest quality in order to satisfy the increasing customer requirements, not only in relation to quality, but also in relation to the environment, sustainability, and social responsibility [18,41,42]. Thus, nowadays and in the future, quality of products, services, and processes is essential to creating value for organizations [43][44][45] and also, to achieving sustainable economic success and to ensure competitiveness [46][47][48] where the application of lean tools is important [49,50]. Hence, quality management has attracted the interest of many people, namely, quality professionals, managers, and academics [51], as a very important area of research [18] toward sustainability [52][53][54] and efficiency, where some problems may appear [55].…”

A model for productivity improvement on machining of components for stamping dies

“…On the other hand, the joint application of Lean tools in the metalworking industry has gained adherents, as it allows relatively sharp gains in short periods of time. Rodrigues et al [31] largely to machining, in order to obtain a quick response in terms of results. In a short period of three months, through the application of this set of tools, he achieved a reduction in the costs of non-conformities in the order of 30% and an increase in worker satisfaction.…”