EWAB and Lean

From JIT to Lean Manufacturing.

Lean Manufacturing originally called "Just In Time Production," is to a large degree based on the work and publications by H.Ford, E.Deming, J.Juran and later T.Ohno's way of implementing this at Toyota with regards to the very unique constraint in Japan, namely the lack of available space.

The book "The machine that changed the world" (1991) introduced the name Lean Manufacturing as a new paradigm.

What's intriguing is that not very much have really happened during the last 50 years!
In the 1980's Eli Goldratt wrote the book "The Goal" which later evolved into a series of books and education programmes which have become known as Theory of Constraints (TOC). But all of it is pretty much the same thing however Theory Of Constraints have a more pragmatic approach and is not limited to production.

Read more about Lean Manufacturing from an objective external source: more...

Creating more value with less resources. (Muri)

Design the process so it is capable of delivering the required results smoothly.
EWAB Flow Technology is designed to respond to new market demands on your production system. Whether it is variable volumes, variable product mix or future new demands as it can quickly be modified and re-configured. The drag and drop layout modularity combined with plug and play functionality will safe guard your investment.

Make sure that the process is flexible in order to eliminate stress or 'Muri'(overburden).
EWAB Flow Technology is based on "pull" and have re-routing capability in order to eliminate ques waiting for machines that are slow or even down, while others are idle.

EWAB and The 7 types of Waste (Muda and Mura)

1. Eliminate Transportation (a movement of products within the factory layout that is not actually required to perform the processing)
EWAB Flow Technology is based on pallets, where each pallet serves as a Kanban card. If empty pallets does not return to pick up new parts there is no need for new parts to enter the process

2. Eliminate Inventory (all components, work in process and finished product not being processed)
EWAB Flow Technology eliminates inventory since the parts are moving one by one in-between operations with a pitch equaling the Takt time and reflecting the travel distance in-between operations.

3. Eliminate Motion (people or equipment moving or walking more than what is required to perform the processing)
EWAB Flow Technology means efficient layouts where operators are in the middle and have the shortest possible distance to all operations that needs to be attended to.

4. Eliminate Waiting (waiting for the next production step)
EWAB Flow Technology is built on kanban/pull and re-routing which means that any waiting will only be due to slower operations or operations being temporarily down. A slow operations, also called a bottleneck or constraint, needs to be protected from starvation. Therefore a time buffer of parts in front of a constraint is required to maintain a lean process as well as a space buffer after the constraint.

5. Eliminate Overproduction (production ahead of demand)
EWAB Flow Technology is built on Kanban and the amount of pallets in relation to flow pitch (TaktTime, see also TOC drum - buffer - rope concept) which automatically eliminates the possibility for overproduction.

6. Eliminate Over Processing (due to poor tool or product design creating unnecessary activity)
EWAB Flow Technology can be designed to clean parts, re-route bad parts out of the process and by-pas operations that have caused bad parts.

7. Eliminate Defects (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing defects)
Defects often occur as a result of manual handling of parts. EWAB Flow Technology is built on using pallets that minimizes or eliminates the need for manual handling of parts.

Kaizen
With EWAB Flow Technology "the five why's" are especially applied in the initial flow system design involving the parts and the family of parts, the production objectives, the use of machines and the type of machines, the flow and ultimately the final layout.

Kanban
EWAB Flow Technology treats each pallet as being a Kanban card which is carrying the necessary information required in the one piece continuos flow.

Heijunka - Production Leveling
EWAB Flow Technology is built for flexible continuous one piece flow with pull and re-routing capability. The volume of certain parts and the mix of various parts being produced is using the information conveyed by the flow of empty pallets and the information about the part carried with each pallet.

Poka-yoke
EWAB Flow Technology involves "murphy" design in the pallet fixtures or "pass through fixtures" that ensuring that the part is positioned accurately or otherwise caught in "murphy gates".

EWAB Flow Technology supports one piece flow while eliminating the capacity, quality, endurance, inconsistency, safety and health issues involved in manual loading.