Week 6

Week 3

When Ford decided to incorporate a new transmission technique in 2010, known as the Powershift transmission, various problems were raised by customers who had purchased the Ford Focus vehicle from 2012 to 2016. This led to potential worldwide filing of class-action suits against the car manufacturing giants by customers, which would have led to the potential loss of more than $4 billion (Atiyeh, 2019). However, using lean manufacturing techniques that had been in use over years, the lawsuit was never filed, but Ford did make some loses accruing to this problem.

Lean manufacturing is described as a business practice that is aimed at reducing the waste from the manufacturing process while maintaining high quality products (Mulholland, 2018).

· Pioneered by Henry Ford himself, the founder of the company.

· Aimed at creating a product-oriented environment which bred a culture of working smart.

· The main techniques that are under this principle are known as the Six-Sigma techniques.

· Standardization-same method of production which has been tested and been deemed as the best possible one. This method is used every day and brings about the best quality of product at the end of each day.

· High wages-increasing the earnings of employees in order to maintain morale and motivation. In the case of Ford, the wages have quadrupled over the past 20 years.

· Wasted movement technique-intends to optimize the floor plan of a company’s working space in order to minimize and eliminate unnecessary movement.

Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt in 1984 developed what is known as Goldratt’s theory of constraints.

· A method of identifying limiting factors and improve on them.

· The tools that achieve the best results under this theory are divided into 3 key categories which are:

· Focusing Steps-aims at identifying and eliminating constraints.

· These steps include identification of constraints, exploiting them, subordinating and synchronizing to them, elevating their performance and finally repeating this process.

· Thinking Processes-include the current reality tree, evaporating cloud tree, future reality tree and a strategy and tactics tree.

· Throughput Accounting-involves coming up with an alternative methodology to eliminate harmful distortions from traditional accounting practices.

· Throughput-the rate of customer sale generation less truly variable costs.

· Investment-tying up money in physical things while operating expenses in the money used in creating throughput.

· Constraints-can be physical, policy-related, paradigmatic and market-based.

The company can incorporate the lean manufacturing principles to improve and control these techniques and the focus steps in the theory of constraints.

· Use value stream mapping to provide a working foundation and develop problem-solving exercises.

· The Goldratt’s theory under this step can help promote a deeper understanding of manufacturing principles.

· To exploite constraints-standardize work to capture the best work practices and keep them up-to-date.

· Subordinating constraints-through line control to slave non-constraint equipment to constraints to increase overall throughput.

· The company can also use total productive maintenance to elevate constraints by offering a holistic approach to maintenance in order to increase the operational time of constraints.

REFERENCES

Atiyeh, C. (2019, July 11). What You Need to Know about Ford’s Powershift Transmission Problems. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.caranddriver.com/news/amp27438193/ford- powershift-transmission-problems/

Mulholland, B. (2018, February 02). 9 Lean Manufacturing Principles to Kill the Jargon and Get Quality Results: Process Street: Checklist, Workflow and SOP Software. Retrieved from https://www.process.st/lean-manufacturing-principles/