Cross Functional Teams Strategies

However, companies wanted to get inventory on hand so that consumers who did location orders would be in a position to receive their items quickly and in the timeframe they required ().

In a lean environment, merchandise are "pulled" from your production cycle by the customer. If there's no customer demand, no merchandise is manufactured. This final results in lower inventory costs, but also requires how the business is able to improve from a single product to an additional simply and with as smaller disruption as possible so that products and solutions can nonetheless be built in time to meet buyer demand. Instead of owning static work processes and jobs teams, lean manufacturing environments depend on dynamic work processes and jobs teams. This requires that cross functional teams be created so that all facets on the production technique (including designing the item and delivering it to the customer) are fully understood and streamlined to include only the value-added steps ("Using Lean Principles," 2000, p. 1).

Cross-Functional Teams in Lean Environments

Cessna, which manufactures general aviation aircraft, decided to use lean manufacturing methods when it started producing aircraft in a new factory in Independence, Kansas. There is a wide number of aircraft built here, inside the four-seater 172 Skyhawk (used primarily as a trainer for commencing pilots)

Companies thinking implementing lean manufacturing now have guidelines which can assist them along with substantial literature which covers the experiences of others who have turned to lean manufacturing. Guidelines had been published inside the form of J4000 and J4001 by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). The criteria by which lean manufacturing is achieved is outlined in J4000, and also the tools for measuring compliance on the criteria are provided in J4001 (Ponticel, 2000, p. 221). These publications are offered from SAE, and training is provided by numerous organizations, such as the Performance Review Institute (PRI).

Many businesses encounter difficulties not in deciding to implement a lean manufacturing process, but in bringing for the cultural changes needed to aid that process. For some companies, employees must overcome a resistance to improve that is critical since management has attempted to implement many other programs in the past. High quality circles, and even cross functional teams, may possibly have been tried at companies and failed, and employees can also be resistant to trying "yet another" management procedure which they think will be supplanted inside a few months or even a few years by a newer method to management and productivity (Wheat, 1999, p. 105).

One from the very best changes that comes about in lean manufacturing is for instance suppliers as integral parts with the company's success plan. At Cessna, this resulted in acquiring key suppliers actually discover supply centers next towards Cessna facility (Sickman, 2000, p. I225). This aspect of lean manufacturing is taken directly from just-in-time practices.

Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.