Lean Manufacturing benefits

With week four’s topic being on Lean Manufacturing and Total Quality Management, I decided to find an article that related to one of the topics. This week I read, “Lean manufacturing at Trolex means faster production and deliveries.” I found this on Materials Handling World Magazine (MHW online). In this article, the primary focus is the company Trolex, a UK based manufacturer of gas detectors and environmental monitoring solutions.

The article goes into discuss that Trolex was recently awarded Manufacturer of the year and had just introduced a lean manufacturing program that is less than a year old. Due to Trolex’s recent success, MHW were curious to find out how their operations were run. The new lean programming that was implemented has greatly improved productivities and giving more opportunities for staff. This is accomplished by Trolex’s ability to make assembly groups for each of Trolex’s product family that are independently responsible for their own aspect of the whole production. Due to these different product groups, they are able to support the making of over 500 products on an “assemble to order basis.” Trolex is very adamant about providing the best training for their workers. Trolex manage in house training and prepare workers to provide cross training to the team. In addition to the Lean Manufacturing program, Trolex is one of the first companies to implement a inspection system for their products. This improves effective and efficient practices.

I found this article very interesting due to the fact that Trolex, broke up each task into different groups. When putting together products, its important to use the work of teams, yet have them work dependently until the tasks is completed. I wonder if companies in the U.S. could benefit from this model.

Sources: 

http://www.mhwmagazine.co.uk/LatestNews/Lean_manufacturing_at_Trolex_means_faster_production_and_deliveries-14757.html

http://www.trolex.com/