Impact Analyses of Lean Production Systems

Abstract

Today's business conditions are characterized by increased competition. Therefore, enterprises have to cope with shorter product life cycles, higher product complexity and more product variants. The reaction of many enterprises is to implement lean production systems. In the past, methods of Lean Production Systems (LPS) have been used to identify waste in production and product development processes. Lean offers an approach to eliminate waste and increase customer value in all processes.The selection of the methods contained in LPS can be individually adapted to the respective requirements and conditions of the corresponding enterprise. Therefore, the identification of the necessary methods is an individual decision for each LPS. The consideration of the methods effects within the socio-technical system of a LPS is crucial because the effects of the different LPS methods provide important information for decision support. Thus, the paper describes the identification of interdependencies and effects in the LPS using System Dynamics. For this purpose, the modeling process of the method SMED is considered as an example. As a result, the interdependencies of the methods are identified and the methods with the amount of connections can be determined.