Research On The Total Stations Instrument Line With Lean Manufacturing

In order to continuously enlarge market demanding and products variety in Asia region, Trimble introduces the Lean manufacturing into production line of the total stations, and applies the Lean philosophy into the production line of the total stations. During Lean activities, Trimble combined Lean with the IE technology and methods to integrate all resources to approach better productivity. The abstract is focus on the development of Trimble internal management, especially on the area of manufacturing process and capacity, in order to eliminate waste and reduce operational cost, finally improve the ability of Trimble core competition.Based on the fully studying on the Lean production systematic theory, we applies it on practice to analyze the historical background on the total station production line, and determines the major issues and challenges of Trimble Shanghai operations, there are three aspects of problems to be highlighted by using Value Stream Mapping, which is the un-balance production process, unreasonable facility layout and over stocked inventory. The Abstract describes the Lean activities happened in Trimble that we optimizes and balances the manufacturing process and capacity with IE technology to eliminate the bottleneck stations and improve the productivity. Meanwhile, we restructured the physical facility layout with the systematic layout planning (SLP) and U-type layout concept, and the just-in-time (JIT) production system is established significantly through Kanban and JIT system on the total station production line. With help of team work, we remarkably improved line usage through elimination, combination, rearrangement, optimization, and operations design improvement. All of these approaches definitely reduced Lead Time to realize on-time-deliver, saved labor headcount, and improved dramatically production line capacity and efficiency. According to the lean schedule in the near future, we extend the Lean concepts into the product design and materials logistics, so as to avoid the root cause of Non-valued and waste from the beginning.Furthermore, Lean activities of the total station production line in Trimble is a just good start of the continuous improvement process, and it would be spread out further Lean experience for all-round Lean enterprise in the whole company and became the great basis of profitable corporation. Finally it would be a good example for other industries and enterprise in China to follow to execute the Lean Manufacturing.