2 - The Plant/Facility Lean Environment

Abstract

This chapter focuses on maintenance planning and maintenance scheduling as performed in the lean environment. It deals with lean manufacturing. Lean Manufacturing is the practice of eliminating waste in every area of production, including customer relations, product design, supplier networks, production flow, maintenance, engineering, quality assurance, and factory management. Its goal is to utilize less human effort, less inventory, and less time to respond to customer demand, less time to develop products, and less space to produce top quality products in the most efficient and economical manner. The complexity of lean manufacturing is in identifying waste and then eliminating it. The first step in identifying waste in any process is to define the current state of the process, which is done by beginning at the end of the process and mapping each step of the process by following it in reverse. In the lean environment, the most commonly used method for mapping the current state of a process is referred to as value stream mapping. The chapter further discusses total productive maintenance (TPM). TPM objectives include the elimination of all accidents, defects and breakdowns. TPM addresses the entire production system life cycle and builds a solid, shop floor-based system to prevent all losses.