A case study of lean,

sustainable
manufacturing

Grand Rapids

Furniture production company

10% YOY increase in sales over the decade

Production model shift from reseller to manufacturer

New facility constructed in 2005

Constant work in progress production model

Wooden value stream and steel value stream

Adversities faced by the company in

2004

Loss of largest customer

Increased pressure for lead time reduction

Growing quality expectations

Lean system helped the company to achieve operational stability and

adapt to the culture of PDCA

3 Lean and green studies were carried out in the company

RCELL 2007-2008

Impact of DES on implementation and operation of workcell

VSM and Shingo assessment procedure proved work cell would be an

efficient manufacturing model than job shop

RCELL was installed

Consist of oxy acetylene brazing stations, grinding station and a robotic

welding station

Standardised work, Kanban, 5s, quick change over

RCELL could produce 35units/hour compared to 25units/hour of job shop

DES validate work cell design was micro batch processing

Simulation experiments involved CONWIP LIMIT=no. of oxyacetylene

stations involved

CONWIP limit<4, constrain productivity and greater than 4 have

constant average delay time

Number of brazing stations do improve productivity

Lean and DES helped to decrease the inventory, processing and lead
time

Without lean and DES over production and under production and
violates the eight forms of lean waste

Recycling Project 2008

Some of the results of lean are essentially green

Standardized process led company to document value added and non value added
process

Completed the environment plan in 2006

Recycling and solid/liquid waste disposal

Kaizen process was started

If you want to see what is wrong with your factory look at your trash-president of
the company

The trash was collected at the central location before disposal

Cost of recycling
Concept
Savings from recycling

Cost
$13,803.34

Trucking cost

$2360.17

Sorting cost at recycling centre

$4392.77

Total savings from recycling

$ 1950

Handling cost

$5100

Analysis showed that 1.75 dumpster/ day could be diverted from solid
waste stream to recycling

Annual estimate for diversion was 220 cubic yards

Lean methodology, kaizen helped the company to achieve greater level

of waste disposal

Optimized supplier selection

Complementary nature of lean and green with optimization

Reduces cost and finds non intuitive approaches to create and deliver value to
customer

Optimization decreased number of suppliers, improved quality, service level and price
simplified the supply chain

Total Supplier Cost (TSC), supplier selection model

TSC is based on multi faceted supplier selection, includes tooling and annual material,
shipping, holding and quality cost

MATLAB was used to find the optimal distribution of 203 parts

$100,000 annual cost savings

conclusion

Each case proved lean supplements green

Lean can be made more effective with the help of technology and
continuous analysis causing a Kaizen process

Lean needs to in the thought process of the employees at all levels for
its effective implementation

Lean can lead to green and cost savings