Citation

Lee-Mortimer A. Engineering 2006; 247(3): 54-56.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Gillard Welch Associates)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Companies can adopt lean principles to manage and reduce the waste associated with process queues, to gain major reductions in cycle time, delay costs and design errors. By using lean methods to remove work in progress (WIP) queues, many companies have been able to deliver simultaneous improvement in manufacturing cycle times, efficiency and quality. The most effective way to eliminate queues is by reducing batch size, and in product development this means reducing the size of 'information blocks' handled at any one time. Managers in all companies can implement lean methods due to their potential to improve cycle time while also reducing design costs, risks and defects.