1st Edition

Grow Your Factory, Grow Your Profits Lean for Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises

By Timothy McLean Copyright 2020
    175 Pages 30 B/W Illustrations
    by Productivity Press

    176 Pages 30 B/W Illustrations
    by Productivity Press

    When I was first given the job of managing a small plastics factory back in 1989, I quickly realized that most of the books and teaching on Lean Manufacturing were designed for big companies and were not relevant to my factory.
    —Tim Mclean

    The last 25 years has seen Tim lead and assist over 100 small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) manufacturing operations. This experience has now been condensed in to Grow Your Factory, Grow your Profits: Lean for Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises, a start-to-finish guide on how to run a successful small and medium-sized manufacturing operation.

    The book presents case studies, practical examples, illustrations, charts, and pictures from real SME manufacturers to provide straightforward solutions to the issues facing every growing manufacturing business. In the book, Tim McLean explains:

    • How to recruit the right people and design the right organization
    • How to empower those people to take accountability and free yourself up from day to day "fire fighting"
    • How to develop a Lean Plant Layout that will maximize productivity and optimize the use of space
    • How to manage materials in order to slash inventory and shortages
    • How to schedule production in order to cut lead times, cut inventory, and delight customers
    • How to get started on a Lean transformation when you lack the resources of a big company

    The book details how SMEs differ from large organizations and why the approach to improvement must also be different. Covering the complete life cycle of small and medium-sized manufacturers, the book addresses a different SME manufacturing issue in each chapter. This enables readers to tackle issues at their own pace and in their own order of priority.

    Grow Your Factory, Grow Your Profits is essential reading for owners, managers, and operational leaders in the 90 percent of manufacturing enterprises that are small or medium sized.

    One Size Does Not Fit All
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    What Is Different about a Small to Medium-Sized Manufacturing Company?
    Branach Manufacturing: The Story of a Manufacturing SME
    How You Might Have Arrived at Where You Are—And How to Move Forward
    What Large and SME Manufacturing Managers Can Learn from One Another
    Key Points in Chapter 1

    What Is Lean Manufacturing, and What Has It Got to Do with Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers?
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    History and Relevancy of Lean Manufacturing
    Value and Waste
    Do a Waste Walk
    Four Rules of the Toyota Production System
    About Six Sigma
    Key Points in Chapter 2
    References

    Deciding Where to Start Your Lean Journey
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Where Not to Start
    Stability First: A Perfect Excuse for Procrastination
    First Decide: What Is the Problem We Need to Fix?
    Getting the Key People on Board
    Understanding the Barriers to Change
    Selecting the First Target for Improvement
    Why Work on the Most Important Value Stream First?
    Key Points in Chapter 3: Deciding Where to Start Your Lean Journey

    Make Your Product Flow: Redesign Your Process
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Mapping Your Process with a Value Stream Map
    Defining Your Product Families
    Current State Mapping Tips
    What Are We Going to Make?
    What Is Your Finished Goods Strategy?
    Can You Combine or Eliminate Processes?
    How Do We Flow Products between Processes?
    Creating One-Piece Flow
    First-In-First-Out
    If FIFO Is Not Possible, Then Pull
    Controlling the Release of Work to Production
    Some Tips on Value Stream Mapping
    Pulling It All Together
    Key Points in Chapter 4
    References

    Getting the Right Layout and Equipment
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Don’t Start Your Future Factory Planning at a Machinery Exhibition
    Planning Your New Factory: Put the Customer First
    Converting the Value Stream to a Layout
    Analyzing Capacity
    Developing the Layout
    Plant Layout Redesign Case Study: Sykes Racing
    Key Points in Chapter 5

    Developing an Organizational Structure and the Leadership to Sustain It
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Getting Started at Developing an Organizational Structure A Value Stream Structure for Middle Management
    Developing Front-Line Teams
    What’s in a Name? Team Leader or Supervisor?
    Recruiting the Right People
    Developing People: You Cannot Recruit Your Way to Success
    When Things Go Wrong: Managing Poor Performance
    Key Points in Chapter 6
    References

    Measuring Success: Selecting the Right Metrics
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Keeping Score in Real Time
    What Are the Metrics in Your Business?
    Select the Most Important Metrics to Focus On
    Develop a Simple Measure of Production Output
    Metrics for Other Functions
    Delivery in Full and on Time (DIFOT): The Most Abused Metric in Manufacturing
    Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
    Key Points in Chapter 7


    What Do I Make Next? The Keys to Production Planning
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Controlling the Release of Work to the Factory: What Goes In Must Come Out
    Getting Processes Back in Balance and Keeping Them That Way
    Don’t Start What You Can’t Finish
    Planning Capacity
    Will a Software System Improve Your Production Planning and On-Time Delivery?
    What’s Wrong with Using an ERP System to Plan Production?
    Case Study: Planning a Seasonal Operation: From ERP to Pull
    Key Points in Chapter 8
    Reference

    What I Need When I Need It: Managing Materials
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    A Typical Material Supply Problem: How It Happens
    The Old Forecast Problem
    Unreliable Suppliers
    Developing a Plan for Every Part
    Working Out What to Order and Stock
    Reorder Point Kanban Systems
    Using Computerized Min-Max Systems
    Ordering from the Supplier
    Key Points in Chapter 9
    Reference

    Developing Your Team
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Can You Become a "Lean Leader"?
    Regularly Spend Time on the Shop Floor
    Ask Why Five Times
    Keeping Track of Performance: Visual Management
    Meet Daily
    Planning on a Page: The A3 Plan
    Key Points in Chapter 10
    References

    Locking in the Gains: The Need for Standardization
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    What Is Standard Work?
    Standard Work, Industrial Engineering, and Scientific Management
    The First Step toward Standard Work: 5S and the Visual Workplace
    Moving from 5S to Standard Work
    When Things Go Wrong: Solving Problems Every Day
    Key Points in Chapter 11
    References

    Resourcing the Change
    What You Will Learn in This Chapter
    Making a Start
    Getting Help
    Selecting a Lean Consultant
    I Need Someone Who Understands My Industry
    What about Hiring Your Own Internal Lean Consultants?
    The Branach Story…Continued from Chapter 1
    Conclusion
    Glossary of Lean Terms
    Index

    Biography

    Timothy McLean