Grow Your Factory, Grow Your Profits: Lean for Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises

When I was first given the job of managing a small plastics factory back in 1989, I quickly realized that most of the books and teaching on Lean Manufacturing were designed for big companies and were not relevant to my factory.
—Tim Mclean

The last 25 years has seen Tim lead and assist over 100 small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) manufacturing operations. This experience has now been condensed in to Grow Your Factory, Grow your Profits: Lean for Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturing Enterprises, a start-to-finish guide on how to run a successful small and medium-sized manufacturing operation. 

The book presents case studies, practical examples, illustrations, charts, and pictures from real SME manufacturers to provide straightforward solutions to the issues facing every growing manufacturing business. In the book, Tim McLean explains:

• How to recruit the right people and design the right organization
• How to empower those people to take accountability and free yourself up from day to day "fire fighting"
• How to develop a Lean Plant Layout that will maximize productivity and optimize the use of space
• How to manage materials in order to slash inventory and shortages
• How to schedule production in order to cut lead times, cut inventory, and delight customers
• How to get started on a Lean transformation when you lack the resources of a big company

The book details how SMEs differ from large organizations and why the approach to improvement must also be different. Covering the complete life cycle of small and medium-sized manufacturers, the book addresses a different SME manufacturing issue in each chapter. This enables readers to tackle issues at their own pace and in their own order of priority.

Grow Your Factory, Grow Your Profits is essential reading for owners, managers, and operational leaders in the 90 percent of manufacturing enterprises that are small or medium sized.

Table of Contents

One Size Does Not Fit All
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
What Is Different about a Small to Medium-Sized Manufacturing Company?
Branach Manufacturing: The Story of a Manufacturing SME
How You Might Have Arrived at Where You Are—And How to Move Forward
What Large and SME Manufacturing Managers Can Learn from One Another
Key Points in Chapter 1

What Is Lean Manufacturing, and What Has It Got to Do with Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers?
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
History and Relevancy of Lean Manufacturing
Value and Waste
Do a Waste Walk
Four Rules of the Toyota Production System
About Six Sigma
Key Points in Chapter 2
References

Deciding Where to Start Your Lean Journey
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Where Not to Start
Stability First: A Perfect Excuse for Procrastination
First Decide: What Is the Problem We Need to Fix?
Getting the Key People on Board
Understanding the Barriers to Change
Selecting the First Target for Improvement
Why Work on the Most Important Value Stream First?
Key Points in Chapter 3: Deciding Where to Start Your Lean Journey

Make Your Product Flow: Redesign Your Process
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Mapping Your Process with a Value Stream Map
Defining Your Product Families
Current State Mapping Tips
What Are We Going to Make?
What Is Your Finished Goods Strategy?
Can You Combine or Eliminate Processes?
How Do We Flow Products between Processes?
Creating One-Piece Flow
First-In-First-Out
If FIFO Is Not Possible, Then Pull
Controlling the Release of Work to Production
Some Tips on Value Stream Mapping
Pulling It All Together
Key Points in Chapter 4
References

Getting the Right Layout and Equipment
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Don’t Start Your Future Factory Planning at a Machinery Exhibition
Planning Your New Factory: Put the Customer First
Converting the Value Stream to a Layout
Analyzing Capacity
Developing the Layout
Plant Layout Redesign Case Study: Sykes Racing
Key Points in Chapter 5

Developing an Organizational Structure and the Leadership to Sustain It
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Getting Started at Developing an Organizational Structure A Value Stream Structure for Middle Management
Developing Front-Line Teams
What’s in a Name? Team Leader or Supervisor?
Recruiting the Right People
Developing People: You Cannot Recruit Your Way to Success
When Things Go Wrong: Managing Poor Performance
Key Points in Chapter 6
References

Measuring Success: Selecting the Right Metrics
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Keeping Score in Real Time
What Are the Metrics in Your Business?
Select the Most Important Metrics to Focus On
Develop a Simple Measure of Production Output
Metrics for Other Functions
Delivery in Full and on Time (DIFOT): The Most Abused Metric in Manufacturing
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
Key Points in Chapter 7  

What Do I Make Next? The Keys to Production Planning
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Controlling the Release of Work to the Factory: What Goes In Must Come Out
Getting Processes Back in Balance and Keeping Them That Way
Don’t Start What You Can’t Finish
Planning Capacity
Will a Software System Improve Your Production Planning and On-Time Delivery?
What’s Wrong with Using an ERP System to Plan Production?
Case Study: Planning a Seasonal Operation: From ERP to Pull
Key Points in Chapter 8
Reference

What I Need When I Need It: Managing Materials
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
A Typical Material Supply Problem: How It Happens
The Old Forecast Problem
Unreliable Suppliers
Developing a Plan for Every Part
Working Out What to Order and Stock
Reorder Point Kanban Systems
Using Computerized Min-Max Systems
Ordering from the Supplier
Key Points in Chapter 9
Reference

Developing Your Team
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Can You Become a "Lean Leader"?
Regularly Spend Time on the Shop Floor
Ask Why Five Times
Keeping Track of Performance: Visual Management
Meet Daily
Planning on a Page: The A3 Plan
Key Points in Chapter 10
References

Locking in the Gains: The Need for Standardization
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
What Is Standard Work?
Standard Work, Industrial Engineering, and Scientific Management
The First Step toward Standard Work: 5S and the Visual Workplace
Moving from 5S to Standard Work
When Things Go Wrong: Solving Problems Every Day
Key Points in Chapter 11
References

Resourcing the Change
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
Making a Start
Getting Help
Selecting a Lean Consultant
I Need Someone Who Understands My Industry
What about Hiring Your Own Internal Lean Consultants?
The Branach Story…Continued from Chapter 1
Conclusion
Glossary of Lean Terms
Index

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