Lean Production Plan for Riordan Manufacturing

Lean production is the management philosophy that pulls the system through the plant. it helps in waste management, expose problems and bottlenecks and finally achieves streamlined production. The system requires the participation of employees, industrial engineering, continuing improvement, the total quality control and small lot services. The system assumes that the environment is stable. This paper discusses the lean production for the new process design and supply chain for the electric fans at Riordan.

Waste is anything other than the amount that is least in equipments, parts materials and workers which are absolutely important for the production of electric fans. Waste may result from overproduction, waiting time, transportation, inventory, processing, motion and the product defects. The elements that have been used by Riodan to reduce wastes are the focused factory networks, JLT production, and group technology, quality at source, uniform plant loading, minimized setup times and kanban production control systems, Chase, J. A. (2005).

Respect for people is main factor to the Riodan production systems. They have managed to assure life time employment for the positions that are permanent and the maintenance of level payrolls even in times that the business conditions are not good. Permanent employs have job security and tend to be flexible, remain in a firm and all work to achieve company objectives. Riodan relies on subcontractor networks. Some of the suppliers are specialists in field that are narrow, normally multiple customers serving.iit has long term relations with its customers and suppliers. Most of the suppliers consider themselves as customer’s family, Chase, J. A. (2005).

The plant layout has been designed to ensure balanced work flow with very little work-in-process inventory. Every work station is part of production line. The logistic designer visualized how aspects of internal and external logistics system tie to the layout.

The firm has a stable schedule over a lengthy period of time. This has been accomplished via level scheduling, freeze windows and the underutilization of capacities. Suppliers as employees and customers are vital in the process. They share projected usage requirements with vendors hence have long-run demand picture that has been placed on their production and distribution systems, Chase, J. A. (2005). In conclusion, lean production has proved its value in Riodan Company. The key factor for the success for the implementation of lean system is the adoption of holistic approach by the company.