Lean Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Lean Management - Essay Example This may further impact on growing economic aspirations of developed and developing countries, which will require fewer resources that create less environmental pollution and greenhouse gases. At the same time, these improvements in production and logistics have given consumers a growing range of higher quality products at lower prices through many different sales channels. Federal Express' originally thought of delivering packages within 24-hours and they did. In 1983, Lens Crafters followed suit by assembling eyeglasses in one hour. Dell computers maintains it market share and profit level even when the competition is very stiff by made-to-order computers in a very short time. What is common in all of these entities The answer is Lean and its application in their respective organization. Add nothing but value (Eliminate Waste). In Lean, it is a primary task to determine what adds value and what activities add value to a product. Then, one will be able to determine the essentials of an activity and reduce or eliminate waste. Unfortunately in any organization, nobody wants to admit that his or her job is sometimes just waste. Breakthroughs are recognized upon recognition of waste. If an activity or cost does not add value, then it should be considered as waste or if an activity; or cost can be forgone with, then it is waste. Taiichi Ohno, the executive of Toyota Production System identified several sources of waste in a manufacturing industry: Overproduction, Inventory, Extra Processing Steps, Motion, Defects, Waiting, and Transportation. Center on the people who add value. Organizations would not admit that their own people are waste at times, unless they are asked which of their employees or system adds value to their output. Unless they can identify areas where people become the value-adding system in the work place, they will not know which is essential and which is waste. The criteria to determine the people who do the work that add value: Resources, Information, Process Design Authority, and Organizational Energy. Usually in a manufacturing entity, the design of tasks is divided to the unskilled worker doing the routine tasks (manual) and the managers doing the production tasks like planning, forecasting and so on. When problems arise, the task of solving lies on the managers and not on the frontline workers who knew what went wrong. This is due to the fact that these workers are not tasked, encouraged and even involved on these matters of production dilemma. They simply asked to keep or maintain the production quota. Womack (1990) stated that a truly lean organization transfers the maximum number of tasks and responsibilities to the workers who add value and place a system for detecting or recognizing defects. In this way, it empowers people to add value to their work. It reorients human resources to become a flow of value and not a functional expert. In the production of Toyota cars, the management figured out how to reduce multiple stamping and create a

Population environment debate Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Population environment debate - Essay Example Several researchers and theorists believe that the resources provided by the natural environment are decreasing and measures need to take place to counter the constant increase in population. Julian Lincoln Simon is against this notion and believes that resources are not becoming scarce and are being generated in abundance (Simon 578) . She believes that the increase in prices of resources provides individuals such as farmers and manufacturers to produce more and to create new discoveries and participate in the act of recycling which results in the creation of substitute goods. This means that resources are not becoming scarce; instead they are being replaced with substitutes which counter the issue of shortage created due to increase in population. Researchers such as Ben Wattenberg state that population growth has negatively impacted the environment but now the growth rate is declining and will eventually come to an end (Wattenberg, 2012). Due to this he believes that the problem of shortage of environmental resources will be countered and there will be enough resources for human beings. According to him the population growth of certain developed nations such as Europe has come to a stand still and the population growth of areas such as Asian nations have declined drastically. In response to Wattenberg, Kenneth Hill states that although population growth rate has declined, still the boom in population is not over and will continue to rise (Slate Magazine, 2012). Hill points out various issues in calculating the population rate and points out that several people are not even counted among the population of a nation. Hill sates that problems such as increase in rate of immigration and decrease in the rate of infant mortality an d increase in the number of old aged people is an alarming point for US. One of the major elements in the debate of population and environment is that those