X began his engineering apprenticeship with CM8 manufacturing ten years ago before moving abroad to work for other companies. He has now returned to work for CM8 as Operations Manager of one of its factories. He is now reflecting with his mentor on his first week in post.

Much has changed since X last worked for the company. The company has grown significantly and now has many more factories. The mass production techniques he once remembered have now been replaced by lean operations and cellular manufacturing. The workplace itself is uncluttered and clean and has been redesigned so that machines are grouped according to what is being produced. Multi-skilled workers are formed into semi-autonomous modular work teams to manufacture complete products or complex components.

Explain what is meant by lean management and how CM8's modular teams might contribute to its operation.

Lean management

Henry Ford's mass production and assembly line methods early in the twentieth century transformed the method goods were made. An alternative way of making things was more recently pioneered by the Japanese including bringing together the activities of managers, employees and suppliers into a tightly integrated system capable of responding rapidly to changing customer demands. The resulting lean production way ('lean') involves a consolidation of improvement systems into a one coherent process for continuous improvement. Waste is any activity that absorbs resources but makes no value and lean focuses on waste elimination in areas such as: 

 •  Product defects that lead to scrap or reworking;

• Over-production of goods that are not currently required;
• stocks of goods awaiting further processing so that cash is tied up in work-in-progress (WIP);
• over processing without adding value;
• Unnecessary movement of people and equipment;
• Unnecessary handling or transportation of goods;
• Idle time such as employees waiting for process equipment to complete its work, etc.