Lean Manufacturing and Company Integration In Swedish and Danish Machining Industry

Abstract

Abstract
Title:
Lean Manufacturing and Company Integration in Swedish and Danish Machining Industry.

Authors:
Daniel Carlsson and Peter Fröberg, Industrial Engineering and Management, Faculty of Engineering at Lund University.

Supervisors:
Nils Hedar, Manager Sandvik Coromant Academy EMEA, Sandvik Coromant AB, Sandviken
Jan-Eric Ståhl, Division of Production and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at Lund University.

Purpose:
To provide:
• A sharp and distinct understanding and embodiment of how Swedish and Danish companies in the Machining industry work with improvements in general and Lean in particular.
• An extended definition of Company Integration and how it plays a critical role in a company’s performance with regard to its internal interaction.

Methodology:
Collecting data was done by conducting case studies of a total of 17 factories. The data was then compiled and categorized in order to provide a summarized comprehensible representation of all data.

Result:
The result, in addition to achieving the Purpose above, is two Management Tools that are direct descendants of their respective topics, aiming to solve problems related to them.

Popular Abstract

Company Integration
Ever found yourself frustrated by those communicative and collaborative problems that always occur between you and your managers, colleagues in other departments and even colleagues in your own department? Of course you have! You have probably also gone one step further and asked yourself why dealing with these problems have to be so difficult and time-consuming, with everybody blaming each other. What if there was a concept for these problems that:
• Pinpoints and defines what they really are all about.
• Sorts out the most common causes for them.
• And gives you the means to deal with them.
All in order to improve communication and collaboration inside your company, while enabling synergies? Having closely studied these problems during 6 months, at companies with production as their core activity, the answer is Company Integration (CI). Constituted by its three subsets vertical- (VI), cross-functional- (CFI) and horizontal integration (HI), CI pinpoints, defines and exemplifies how problems occur in an organization’s all three organizational dimensions (vertically, cross-functionally and horizontally). Furthermore, CI objectively identifies the most common causes for these problems to be:
• The lack of communication: Acting without consulting the parties that are to be affected.
• The lack of knowledge: Acting without having proper understanding and insight.
• The "I know best"-delusion: Acting under the delusion that “I know best”.
• The lack of a holistic perspective: Acting egoistically not considering the organization as a whole.
With this new understanding of what these problems are and why they occur, it is possible to go about solving them. For this the Company Integration Model (CIM) has been developed. A model that enables undoubtable illustrations and descriptions for how an uninformed change creates a problem that propagates (vertically, cross-functionally and/or horizontally) across the organization, finally landing and causing its adverse effects somewhere else in the organization. Deploying the CIM will make employees aware of the company as a whole and facilitate the creation of previously unknown synergies, in other words create Company Integration.
 
Lean Situation
Imagine yourself in the role of taking charge of a Lean implementation effort, with only theoretical prior knowledge. How would you go about doing it and where would you start? When making a quick web search for Lean, you will be faced with countless different sites, all containing the tools and methods for facilitation of Lean. At the same time, you will most likely read several opinions on how to be truly successful when implementing Lean. This will make you come to the conclusion that you will need a way to:
• Understand what will make your Lean implementation effort perform worse vs. better.
• Analytically identify where to put effort, in order to improve in terms of Lean as well as where Lean initiatives should be continued vs. discontinued.
By studying companies in the machining industry and their Lean implementation efforts during 6 months, it was possible to identify different company characteristics and behaviors. These characteristics and behaviors could then categorize companies as either performing worse or better with regard to different Lean aspects. In addition, the study also identified the following trends and conclusions:
• Trend: Companies are either generally worse (worse practice) or generally better (better practice), when looking across all Lean characteristics and behaviors.
Conclusion: Lean has to be approached as a whole, in order to be successful.
• Trend: There are best practices but no overall best practitioners, with regard to Lean.
Conclusion: The distribution of effort, with regard to Lean, is unbalanced. 
• Trend: Companies categorized as worse practice are in general small, whilst companies categorized as better practice are in general big.
Conclusion: Lean requires time, effort and money in order for it to be successful.
These trends and conclusions, together with the categorizations, have led to the development of the management tool Lean Performance Analysis (LPA). The tool uses statements to identify a company as either worse- or better practice. By doing this, the process of measuring and defining a company’s Lean performance is streamlined, making it easier to efficiently find improvement areas. Furthermore, deploying the LPA, will provide a Lean transformation with a starting point, something that otherwise can be exceedingly difficult to find.

• author: Carlsson, Daniel and Fröberg, Peter
• supervisor: Jan-Eric Ståhl
• organization: Production and Materials Engineering
• course: MMTM01 20152
• year: 2016
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Lean, Lean Production, Lean Manufacturing, the Toyota Way, the two katas, Kata, Improvement kata, Coaching kata, Lean Philosophy, Lean Process, Lean People and Partners, People and Partners, Lean Problem Solving, LPA, Company Integration, CI, Vertical Integration, Cross-functional Integration, Horizontal Integration, CIM.
• language: English
• id: 8870493
• date added to LUP: 2016-04-01 11:15:29
• date last changed: 2016-04-01 11:15:29