In the context of a global competitive environment, industrial companies have to pursue continuous performance improvement, leading to the popularity of Lean Manufacturing throughout the world. Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is considered the relevant performance measurement tool, which is able to take into account a machine’s availability, performance and quality. Therefore, many firms ...

In this paper, a method is developed for presenting a novel virtual torque sensor based on precise model and position measurements avoids the need of traditional strain gauges and amplifiers. More specifically, the harmonic drive compliance model and the Gaussian process regression (GPR) technique are used together to achieve virtual torque sensor measurement. While the harmonic drive complianc...

This paper presents a look at the concept of Lean Manufacturing as applied to the office environment. Lean Manufacturing, which is often referred to as Lean, is a philosophy of manufacturing process improvement through the elimination of waste. As Lean developed since its origins in the automobile industry, it has been extended to apply to various enterprises and organizations, and has achieved...

Lean is a systematic approach to identify and eliminate non-value-added activities or waste through continuous improvement process. While traditional lean manufacturing focuses on the activities within a single organization, lean supply chain consists of the same processes, but it views these processes over multiple organizations. This research addresses an important yet under-studied area – le...

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship between lean production implementation and financial performance. Particular emphasis is placed on the mediating role of inventory leanness in deriving the financial performance benefits commonly associated with lean production. Moreover, the interaction among different lean practice bundles in affecting financial and inve...

Are lean production jobs intrinsically motivating? More than 20 years after the arrival of lean production, this question remains unresolved. Generally accepted models of job design such as the Job Characteristics Model (JCM, (Hackman, J.R., Oldham, G.R. 1976. Motivation through the design of work: test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16, 250–279.)) cannot explain the...

Genetic improvement of animals is a long term process and breeding programmes need to consider aspects that are of importance in the future. In addition to cost-effective pig production, factors that affect marketing of pork will become increasingly important. One important factor in marketing of pork is leanness. Consumers prefer lean meat for health reasons. This is taken into account in toda...

Lean practices and principles build on a half-century of successive initiatives aimed at transforming social and technical systems in organizations. While they are seen as central to the revitalization of the U.S. aerospace industry, there is great variation in the degree to which lean initiatives emphasize just technical/manufacturing systems versus additional social and enterprise dimensions....

BACKGROUND The demand for cataract surgery is rising, calling for pathways that have good access and are cost-effective. Lean thinking is a management strategy, aimed at improving quality while reducing costs. Lean production processes are designed to identify gaps between expected and actual performance. AIM To analyse the efficacy and efficiency of a lean cataract pathway. METHODS Lean ca...

BACKGROUND Lean healthcare is claimed to contribute to improved patient satisfaction, but there is limited evidence to support this notion. This study investigates how primary-care centres working with Lean define and improve value from the patient's perspective, and how the application of Lean healthcare influences patient satisfaction. METHODS This paper contains two qualitative case studie...