The lean certification practice includes many building blocks that cover a wide-range of manufacturing and business practices. Lean training helps a manufacturing company grow while keeping costs low, or even cutting costs by developing efficient means of growth. One aspect of the lean certification process is grouping machines and labor into cells. Cells have the property of being a small subset of the overall manufacturing line. By creating cells, expansion can be done in incremental amounts. These building blocks are also easier to move. Once a cell has been created, it can be placed at different locations along the manufacturing line, or it can be moved to another site all together. Therefore, creating these modular blocks is a major facet of the lean manufacturing process.
When approaching a manufacturing line for the first time, and trying to impose a lean certification on that line, an analysis of the process flow is a necessary first step. Typically, a product line is not laid out in cellular design. The usual design is to have one continuous flow from beginning to end. In fact, this was of laying out a manufacturing line makes sense, because it is efficient, so long as product demand doesn’t change. That is where the costs start to rise. Typically, a manufacturing line is setup to produce items at a certain rate, with an allowable amount of growth projected. The initial design generally does not allow for huge changes in demand, nor does it take into account future technological advances. A manufacturing line can grow old and inefficient, as technology advances and demand increases.
Cell analysis looks at the production line in terms of grouping things together, shorting travel distances, and putting intermediate inspection stations in place along the Industrial Production Engineering way. The goal is to create a self-sufficient unit that requires a certain output, and delivers an identifiable output at a certain rate, and already inspected for quality.
The usually boundaries of a cell are at existing machines already in the manufacturing line. Once the boundaries are distinguished, the equipment and the personnel within that cell can be moved or upgraded as necessary for advancement and inspection.
A cell usually incorporates more than one machine, although a single large machine that requires multiple people to operate may qualify as a cell all by itself. Sometimes controlling the machine is a place to begin to look for upgrading a piece of machinery.
Inspection is a key to cell design, as well. By requiring each module in the line to have an output that is quality inspected is more efficient that having a single large inspection at the end of the process.
Creating cells and making modular design part of the lean training process is a key Secondary Sector In Indonesia factor in allowing growth while keeping costs low for manufacturing operations.
