Lean production system applied to project- driven organizations: the airplane manufacturing industry case

Abstract

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (Riunet)

[EN] It was after the reinforcement of Toyota as one of the best automotive producers in the world when many other manufacturers fell interested in this new philosophy. During years, companies from different industries have tried to implement Lean by adapting it to their procedures. Industries such as health care, e-commerce, construction, fast food and project environments. The challenge is that Lean tools where designed in a manufacturing environment, characterized by high volumes of production and a intermediate complexity of the product. This report will analyse some of those industries and will explain how they adapted Lean tools to different conditions. Afterwards, this report will focus in how to adapt Lean Philophy to project environments, in which the product is characterized by one-off manufacturing, large-scale of their product and the high level of complexity. In order to do it, it will build a case study based on airplane manufacturing by help of the literature. The case study will analyse three different processes in order to find different types of wastes and different inefficiencies as well as to understand the rules of the relationships between supplier, producer and customer. After that, the report will explain which Lean tools are the most suitable to be applied and how they should be implemented. Besides that, the report will also consider the implementation of different management tools, which although they are not usually seen as Lean tools, they may support the companies to reach the next level of efficiency.