Research And Application Of Lean Manufacturing In M Faucet Company

Lean Manufacturing originated form the Toyota Production System in60’ to70’ of thelast century, it’s a successful manufacturing philosophy proved by Toyota with its excellentperformance in Auto business. its main idea is that only produce the required number ofproducts at the right time according to the demand of customers. The difference of LeanManufacturing philosophy and the traditional mass production philosophy is obvious, Leanadvocates for ‘Zero inventory’,‘The lowest cost’ and ‘Quick response’. It’s an effective toolto improve the productivity and operational efficiency in many enterprises. In addition, Leanalso emphasizes that the concept of all employees’ participation, continuous improvement, itcan fully utilize the company’s human resources to improve the operations to approach to beperfect.M company was established in1995in Guangzhou, it’s a joint venture of plumbingproducts design and manufacturing company. The main products are faucets and showers.60%of them export, and40%are for domestic market, with annual sales of about RMB600Million. The factory located in Guangzhou is mainly for assembly of products, the majority ofmetal&plastic components are purchased from suppliers.Firstly this dissertation introduces Lean philosophy and Lean tools which are widelyused by many enterprises. And then introduces the development of Lean philosophyworldwide in the past around30years. After that this dissertation analyzes the issues in theoperation system of M company by the investigation to the existing whole operation systemwith Lean tools, it makes us understand the gap between the current system and Leanrequirement. Base on the analysis result we make a plan for Lean promotion andimplementation in M company. It focuses on several areas: Plant layout optimization;planning system improvement; VMI and JIT for inventory management; TPM, TQM,5S andcontinuous improvement activities promotion, etc. the whole Lean promotion will last foraround2years and it’s a long way for us to maintain the effect and find breakthroughcontinuously.By the comparison of previous and improved operation situation, Lean Manufacturingphilosophy is proved as one effective way for operation optimization in M company.