"A Classification Scheme for the Process Industry to Guide the Implementation of Lean"

Fawaz Abdulmalek, Jayant Rajgopal, and Kim Needy

Engineering Management Journal

June 2006, pp. 15-25

This article provides a very clear discussion of how Lean can be applied in various degrees to process industries. Lean has mainly been applied to discrete products in manufacturing, but there have been previous successful applications in process industry organizations such as DuPont and Dow Chemical.

A valuable classification scheme is provided in this article in order to characterize process industries into distinguishable groups. The three aspects of the classification, and implications for Lean are:

• Product characteristics—The two primary characteristics here are materials used and product volume. Materials vary in terms of quality, and more importantly in the variety of materials used. Product volume refers to the amount of output/finished product produced. Industries with low raw material variety and high product volumes (such as beverage industries) may not have much need for Lean tools such as production smoothing, small-lot production, JIT, kanban, quick changeover, and standardization. However, tools such as TQM, Total Productive Maintenance, and kaizen would likely be very useful. Conversely, industries with high variety of raw materials and low volumes (such as specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals) would likely be more appropriate for small lot production, quick changeover, and cellular layouts.
• Process characteristics—"The type of equipment and the facility layout dictate the flexibility inherent in the manufacturing process. This in turn determines the extent to which lean principles can be adapted. In general, dedicated specialized equipment provides the least amount of flexibility, while non-dedicated, general purpose equipment allows for the most." High process flexibility means that tools such as kanban, quick changeover, production smoothing, and work standardization are more feasible. TPM is likely to be the primary approach for non-flexible production characteristics.
• Point in the process when the product becomes discrete—Almost all process industry products become discrete at some point during the manufacturing process (if only by being placed in a container at the end of the process). Textiles and steel become discrete fairly early in the process. Gas becomes discrete late in the process. In general, the earlier the point of discretization, the more opportunities for Lean.

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