Manufacturing Digital Discovers How Agile Can Speed Up Your Manufacturing Change

Online, August 1, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Norwich, UK - Nothing in life exists in isolation, and this false partition of the fundamentals of best practice can lead to confusion and failure. Little wonder that both workforce and management are cynical about buzzwords and distrust the latest 'silver bullet'. So perhaps it is fitting that the latest evolution is occurring more as a natural progression, growing out of the lean shopfloor's ability to make changes quickly, and management's ability to seize opportunity.

"I tend to see two types of company," said Simon Griffiths, Head of MAS WM which helps manufacturing companies with business improvement. "There's the likes of the automotive and aerospace industries that have a conventional heartbeat: building X number of products per day within a limited although fairly large number of options. But we're seeing more and more companies picking up business because they are able to respond extremely quickly to the demand for totally new products, and this comes down to agility."

So what are the essential elements of agility?

According to Colin Herron, Manufacturing Productivity Manager at One North East, lean and agile are inextricable.

"The base philosophy of lean must be there, without it the attempt to become agile will simply collapse," he said.

Lean essentially makes agility possible, through organization and standardization of the workplace, through eliminating the chaos of inventory and work-in-progress on the shopfloor, and by continuously reducing changeover times through SMED (single minute exchange of die) and removing wasted time and effort from the process. Once these wastes are removed, the shopfloor is capable of moving quickly and changing products and processes within a short space of time.

Read the full article and learn more about the essential elements of agility at Manufacturing Digital.