lean reflection
Briana McLaughlin
Operations Management
May 25th, 2014
Lean Reflection
Throughout our operations management class we have practiced many simulations and experienced several observations on lean manufacturing. Although there are many components of lean manufacturing, I have highlighted some of the key points I have absorbed from the class thus far. Lean manufacturing concepts I have learned the most from include the three M’s, the five S’s, flexible resources, total quality management, and respect. In the following paragraphs I will reflect on these ideas and how they pertain to the central belief of lean manufacturing: All waste must be eliminated and my own personal experiences.
Eliminating all waste is the central belief behind lean manufacturing and there are three types of waste we can eliminate: muda, mura, and muri. Muda waste is any kind of waste that has no value to the work process such as time, resources, workspace, transportation, inventory, or talent. Mura waste refers to unevenness in operations and muri is the over utilization of workforce or machinery. I see the muri and muda waste on a daily basis in my workplace in the form of excessive consumption of our employee’s time at the restaurant I work in. We have an expensive and efficient point of sale system that can easily take in dinner orders on a touch screen from the serving staff and print out the order in the kitchen to each specific station, however our management team continues to impose a system of ticket writing on the serving staff. The serving staff is trained for hours upon hours on a unified ticket writing language at the beginning of their employment. For each order they are then to ring in the order on the point of sale system, write the order on the given ticket, and then walk to the hand-written ticket into the busy, overcrowded kitchen to personally hand in the order. The system has elements of muda and muri waste in the fact that it is a waste of time, energy, talent,
Operations Management
May 25th, 2014
Lean Reflection
Throughout our operations management class we have practiced many simulations and experienced several observations on lean manufacturing. Although there are many components of lean manufacturing, I have highlighted some of the key points I have absorbed from the class thus far. Lean manufacturing concepts I have learned the most from include the three M’s, the five S’s, flexible resources, total quality management, and respect. In the following paragraphs I will reflect on these ideas and how they pertain to the central belief of lean manufacturing: All waste must be eliminated and my own personal experiences.
Eliminating all waste is the central belief behind lean manufacturing and there are three types of waste we can eliminate: muda, mura, and muri. Muda waste is any kind of waste that has no value to the work process such as time, resources, workspace, transportation, inventory, or talent. Mura waste refers to unevenness in operations and muri is the over utilization of workforce or machinery. I see the muri and muda waste on a daily basis in my workplace in the form of excessive consumption of our employee’s time at the restaurant I work in. We have an expensive and efficient point of sale system that can easily take in dinner orders on a touch screen from the serving staff and print out the order in the kitchen to each specific station, however our management team continues to impose a system of ticket writing on the serving staff. The serving staff is trained for hours upon hours on a unified ticket writing language at the beginning of their employment. For each order they are then to ring in the order on the point of sale system, write the order on the given ticket, and then walk to the hand-written ticket into the busy, overcrowded kitchen to personally hand in the order. The system has elements of muda and muri waste in the fact that it is a waste of time, energy, talent,