Comparison of Production Systems

Comparison of Production Systems

Introduction

This research paper discusses the orientation of Lean six sigma, the basic idea behind this methodology and the justification of lean six sigma production systems as the best standardized production system. It also covers the core ideas of lean production system and six sigma statistical methodologies towards the production system. The Lean Six Sigma is the world class and best methodology that not only considers the voice of business and the voice of customer but also the voice of employees, who contributed in the production system and are the main source of organization's profits.

Lean V/S Toyota Production System

Lean and Toyota production System are generally considering as synonym terms having the same philosophy of creating a quality product by eliminating wastes. Conceptually there are differences between the both production systems those are discussed below in three different heads:

Profit Maximization

Under the Toyota Production System (TPS), the Toyota is focusing on profit maximization by reducing wastes. The main principle of Toyota is “price-cost= profit”. To seek the profits company focuses on cost reduction to get the benefits. On the other side, lean focuses on quality production and waste reduction. The lean de-emphasizes the concept of profit maximization of TPS by working on the bottom line theme of reducing waste and improving the quality of end user product through the concepts of Pull and Flow.

Tool Orientation

The TPS is following many tools which have limitations and often expose some particular problems in the organization. For example the tool of “Value Stream Mapping” mainly focuses on information and material flow problems, but the same tool is not strong enough on methods, man and metrics. The management of the company internally knows the limitation of this tool and understands that it is not the best tool to evaluate and analyze every kind of waste and problems within an organization. For handling the issues like capacity bottlenecks, safety, personnel development, down time and seek profit, other tools are used in organization effectively and widely that are not part of TPS. Lean covers all the related problems of managing human resources and waste in production (Russell & Taylor, 2007).

Management Techniques

TPS follows the management techniques rather than the change agents as the organization emphasizes on development of skills of production manager and production supervisors rather than rely on staff-level changes for driving improvements. It is a Push implementation of Lean rather than Pull. Lean focuses on Pull meaning that it encourages the change agents and did not rely on skill development for improvements (Wangphanich et.al, 2010).

Lean Six Sigma Approach

The term Lean Six Sigma, is the combination of two quality betterment approaches: Lean and Six Sigma. Lean methodological analysis focuses on gets rid of waste and streamlining processes. Six Sigma projects involve increasing quality and return while reducing faults and variations (Pfer, 2008). Lean was a production methodology that focuses on maximizing value added activities and does away with waste that usually results in the increment in cost of running a ...