Lean Manufacturing
What Are the Limits to Make-to-Order Manufacturing?
Automated storage and retrieval system maker Modula produces a product with 2,000 parts and hundreds of variations that has to be completed within a customer’s site. Here is a picture of what is possible in making a product tailored to the customer.
Peter Zelinski
Editorial Director, Modern Machine Shop
10 Lean Manufacturing Ideas for Machine Shops
In addition to the right mix of traditional strategies, a lean manufacturing toolkit can make high-mix, low-volume machining faster, more predictable and less expensive.
Read MoreIn a Machine Shop, the Labor of Lean is Data-Driven
Approximating single-piece flow in a job shop environment requires an ongoing commitment to analyzing and acting on evidence.
Read MoreHow To Audit Your Machine Shop Improvements
Here are a few practical approaches for auditing your manufacturing initiatives.
Read MoreContinuous Improvement Must Be Continuous
It’s easy to do the work to improve your facility and then want to sit back to see how things go. Unfortunately, this leads to complacency, which is hard to overcome.
Read MoreThe Three Pillars of Reliable Machine Shop Productivity
This shop looks for a systematic convergence of three disciplines in production management.
Read MoreFrequently Asked Questions Regarding Lean Manufacturing
For as long as lean manufacturing concepts have been around, there are some who still do not understand what lean is and why it’s an important part of a continuous-improvement strategy.
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Standardization Leans the Way to High-Mix Automation
An increasingly digitalized, lean manufacturing process begins with a common selection of cutting tools and five-axis machining fixtures.
Matt Danford
Former Senior Editor, Modern Machine Shop
Lean and Data-Driven Manufacturing Go Hand in Hand
Lean manufacturing is a never-ending quest to remove waste from processes. This pursuit should put a shop on the path to data-driven manufacturing.
Read MoreLean Manufacturing Begins With Layout, Commitment
Sustainably streamlining production of a varied mix of low-volume work depends not only on a strategy tailored for job shops, but also on human drive and enthusiasm.
Read MoreShops Cite Their One Big Technology Addition
Here are three technologies that participants in our Top Shops benchmarking survey say have been particularly impactful on their machining businesses.
Read More5S in a Box
Based on this shop’s experience, industrial vending systems and lockers can help kick-start and sustain lean manufacturing initiatives.
Read MoreInventory Systems Boost Lean Manufacturing Efforts
Computerized, point-of-use storage and dispensing systems help this shop target waste that is difficult to measure and often labor-intensive to eliminate.
Read MoreLean Manufacturing Is No Less Important
There are a variety of new production technologies coming onto the scene, but lean manufacturing should remain a shop’s underpinning.
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Air Casters Keep Shop Floors Damage-Free
Using air casters from AeroGo helps machine tool manufacturer AgieCharmilles, a division of GF Machining Solutions, move equipment around its showroom without denting or scratching its new epoxy floor.
Emily Probst
Former Senior Editor, Modern Machine Shop
Lean No Less Important
Lean manufacturing shouldn’t become lost in the shuffle of today’s emerging part-production technologies, strategies and approaches.
Read MoreImprovement Is Not Optional
No matter how busy this shop gets, it continues to pull teams of employees out of production so they can focus on solving problems to make incremental process changes. The advances add up. Today, this is a very different shop than it once was.
Read MoreHuman Capital
This shop’s attention to process improvement led it to recognize and appreciate the largest source of unrealized potential in the company: the employees. Now, employee improvement is a priority in the plant manager’s role, and training has become a systemized part of the process.
Read MoreA Robotic (R)evolution
This shop’s evolving approach to automation has led it to streamline processes, challenge preconceived notions about robotics and embrace the notion that a manufacturing sequence is greater than the sum of its parts.
Read MoreVideo: A Job Shop’s Lean Transformation
For shops considering a move to lean manufacturing—or a recommitment to lean manufacturing—this video is a great encouragement.
Read MoreLean from the Beginning
How would you design a new plant if you could begin today? Rolls-Royce Crosspointe is a major manufacturing site that was planned from the outset with the expectation that continuous improvement would always be part of its culture.
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Lean Manufacturing Means Taking Nothing for Granted
As foreign competition undercut Valtech Corp.'s business throughout the aughts, the company had a choice to make: Switch production to CNC machining for one of its products, or abandon the product line. Starting from scratch with older machine tools has helped the company scrutinize each step of its processes.
Brent Donaldson
Editor-in-Chief, Modern Machine Shop
What Does Lean Actually Mean?
It's important to make sure your employees are on the same page if you are considering a move to lean. Watch this presentation by BlueSwarf CEO Greg Eckerman for an introduction to lean's core principles.
Read MoreUpon Further (A3) Review
Using lean manufacturing’s A3 problem-solving process, Genesis Attachments found that magnetic workholding could provide greater benefits than simply getting parts on and off machines faster.
Read MoreFor Manufacturers, a Little Inventory is Healthy
It turns out that too much efficiency is inefficient.
Read MoreGoing Lean in Order to Grow
This shop has a plan for dramatically expanding its contract machining business in high-value markets.
Read MoreWhat is Your Cost Model Costing You?
Some savings are hard to measure precisely, particularly on a per-part basis. That doesn’t mean those savings don’t exist.
Read MoreFrom Job Shop Chaos To Lean Order
Classic lean manufacturing principles are practically taken as gospel, but benefits can be elusive for manufacturers that produce a variety of parts in low volumes. This shop took a different approach to lean—one aided by software that helped identify a more efficient machine layout based patterns in part routings.
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