Lean Scheduling

Dear David, I have always believed in what lean manufacturing proposes, but my fear now is do we need ERP, MES and scheduling packages to complement lean to gain competitive advantage. These packages cost a lot and take substantial time to get everyone to buy in to. What do you think.

One of the hallmark attributes of Lean is its reliance on visual and simple mechanical aids to improve manufacturing effectiveness. Most elements of Lean, e.g., value chain mapping, 5S, Kanban, can be implemented without a significant investment in automation. So the simple answer is "YES" -- Lean projects can generally procede and yield benefits in the absence of or in parallel with ERP or SCM investments. That said, these IT systems are essential for most enterprises and yield significant benefits. It's hard to imagine a competitive enterprise that doesn't have an effective, state-of-the-art ERP system to manage its back room operations. The question about scheduling capability is an interesting one and worthy of additional comment. Most Lean organizations use spreadsheets to schedule the shop floor to create leveled (Heijunka) schedules. This approach can be used in tandem with other scheduling capabilities. There are schools that profess that TOC- (Theory of Constraints) based schedulers can be used to manage Lean scheduling. However, TOC scheduling is only moderately effective in creating leveled production schedules to meet Lean objectives. TOC approaches simply cannot achieve the granularity to level production over shorter intervals (e.g., days, shifts). And they optimize on constraints, rather than on demand flow, yielding different outcomes. So additional -- or alternative -- scheduling is required. The spreadsheet approach is effective in pilot contexts. It is questionable whether spreadsheets are a scalable technology in larger organizations, and they present issues of data integrety when used in isolation. There are several ISVs offering "Lean Scheduling" capabilities that can be licensed on a standalone basis: Factory Logic, Pelion, and SoftBrands.