Management Decision

Applying lean assessment tools in Chinese hi-tech industries

Shahram Taj,
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MD
43,4 Applying lean assessment tools
in Chinese hi-tech industries
Shahram Taj
628 College of Business Administration, University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit,
Michigan, USA

Abstract
Purpose – To evaluate the current state of manufacturing in some selected plants in electronics,
telecommunication/wireless, and computer industries in the Republic of China.
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Design/methodology/approach – A spreadsheet-based assessment tool is used to evaluate nine

key areas of manufacturing. Participants are asked to answer questions for each area, namely
inventory; team approach; processes; maintenance; layout/handling; suppliers; setups; quality; and
scheduling/control. A score is given for each response in the assessment. Scores are then totaled for
each of the nine areas. The results are then displayed in the score worksheet and finally a lean profile
chart is created to display the current status of the plant and the gap from their specific lean targets.
Findings – Results of the lean assessment tool have revealed a somewhat significant gap from the
lean manufacturing target, but have also identified opportunities for improvement.
Research limitations/implications – The research findings are from some selected
manufacturing plants in Chinese hi-tech industries and they should not be interpreted as an
indicator of that particular sector in China.
Practical implications – A very useful lean assessment tool that is easy to use by plants’
management to help them identify their current state of manufacturing and the gaps from ideal lean
targets.
Originality/value – This paper offers a practical and easy to use assessment tool to help
manufacturing managers to make their manufacturing operations more productive.
Keywords Lean production, China, Advanced manufacturing technologies
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
China is the fastest growing market in the world. Its GDP has grown by more than 9
percent annually between 1978 and 2002 and has the biggest consumer market in the
world. Zeng and Williamson (2003) in their paper “The Hidden Dragons” discuss the
emergence of Chinese companies as powerful rivals to multinational companies not
only within China but also throughout the global market. Several Chinese companies
This research has been partially funded by a research grant from the Beijing International MBA
(BIMBA) program at Peking University.
The author acknowledges several organizations and people who were instrumental in this
research study. The Beijing International MBA program, BiMBA, at Peking University provided
a research grant to conduct this study while teaching in China. Mr Quarterman Lee, President of
Strategos, Inc. gave me permission to use his lean assessment tool. The author’s students at
BiMBA contacted manufacturing executives to conduct the assessments. Dr Richard Colombo,
Management Decision
Vol. 43 No. 4, 2005 Visiting Professor at BiMBA from Fordham University helped me with his editorial suggestions.
pp. 628-643 Finally, would like to thank two former research/teaching assistants, Ms Yalda Ghrorashyzadeh
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0025-1747
in United States who helped with the research proposal and Ms Selina Zhang in Beijing in with
DOI 10.1108/00251740510593602 the collecting and analyzing the results.
 have created brands that have taken the market share from stronger rivals in Asia, Applying lean
Europe, and the United States. assessment tools
Global companies have established many production facilities in China due to lower
wage rates and the trend towards outsourcing. In order to stay competitive, companies
are trying to make their manufacturing facilities more efficient and lean. Traditionally
managers have heavily relied on accounting metrics. These are inadequate for
managing a lean manufacturing operation. A profit and loss statement is the end result 629
of a long chain of decisions that may go back for years or even decades. Managing a
lean factory requires data that reflects what is happening upstream in these chains of
events. We can apply assessment tools to obtain some key information about the status
of a manufacturing facility. We demonstrate the application and usefulness of the
assessment tool in several manufacturing plants in China.
We contacted manufacturing executives at 65 manufacturing plants in China to fill
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out the lean assessment questionnaire about their plants. This study has been carried
out while the author was in China for two months in 2004. The purpose of the visit was
to teach an MBA course in Operations Management at the Beijing International MBA
(BiMBA) program at Peking University. Ninety-one students in full time and part-time
classes in two Operations Management classes were asked to contact manufacturing
executives to conduct the assessment. The lean assessment tool from Strategos Inc.
had been used in this research study (Lee, 2004). In the following sections, we will
review the lean manufacturing literature followed by the research approach and
description of the assessment tool and finally the interpretation of the result and
findings for 20 selected plants in hi-tech industries.

Literature review
The term “lean manufacturing” or “lean production” was first used by Womack et al.
(1990) in their historical book “The Machine That Changed the World”. The lean
manufacturing describes the profound revolution that was initiated by the Toyota
Production System against mass production system. Womack and Jones continued
their research in lean production and studied the transfer of other companies into lean
crusade in their second book, “Lean Thinking” (Womack and Jones, 1996). They
explained that lean manufacturing is much more than a technique; it is a way of
thinking, and the whole system approach that creates a culture in which everyone in
the organization continuously improve operations. Liker (1997) wrote the third book in
this series with the title of “Becoming Lean – Inside Stories of U.S. Manufacturers”.
The most recent book about the Toyota system is also by Liker (2004) where he
describes the management principles of Toyota that he claims to be the world’s
greatest manufacturer.
Lean means “manufacturing without waste”. Waste is anything other than minimum
amount of equipment, materials, parts, and working time that are absolutely essential to
production. Waste (“muda” in Japanese) has seven types: waste from overproduction,
waste of waiting time, transportation waste, inventory waste, processing waste, waste of
motion, and waste from product defects. Most companies waste 70-90 percent of their
available resources. Even the best lean manufacturers probably waste 30 percent.
Interestingly, every company has to find its own way to implement the lean method:
there is no universal way that will apply to all. Despite the wide knowledge and available
resources, many companies are struggling to stay “lean”.
 MD The decade of 1990s was witness to many transformation of traditional manufacturing
into lean approach. Many companies either transformed or created new cellular
43,4 production system. For some actual and practical applications see Ellegood et al. (2000),
Duda et al. (1999), Taj et al. (1998) and Cochran et al. (1998). There are also examples of
how a complete factory could be designed in lean principles. Taj and Ghorashyzadeh
(2003) address the strategic issues for planning lean manufacturing plants and Taj et al.
630 (2000) show a real example of designing a factory with a future in mind.
In order to improve manufacturing operations, we need to assess the state of
operations at the manufacturing facilities. Assessment is a valuable tool that must be
used to study the current state. Goodson (2002) has developed a tool kit that aids
experts in as little as 30 minutes to “Read a plant fast” to tell if a factory is truly lean.
He describes his approach as rapid plant assessment (RPA). To do this assessment you
would need a team of experts to tour the plant. During the tour, the team observes all
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aspects of plant’s environment and looks for the evidence that the plant adheres to best
practices.
Lee (2004) an international renowned expert in lean manufacturing has also
developed a lean assessment tool. This assessment tool helps to investigate, evaluate,
and measure key areas of manufacturing. The tool is very user-friendly and the result
is a deeper understanding of key issues, problem areas, and potential solutions. We
have used this assessment tool in this study.

Research approach
Ninety-one students who enrolled in the operations management class, in the BiMBA
program of the Peking University, were given the lean assessment tool. Students were
given detailed information about the assessment tool and also provided with a cover
letter both in English and Chinese explaining the purpose of this research. We also
added a list of questions to be filled out by the manufacturing executives that identifies
the industry, product lines, the name of the manufacturing plant, location, and main
product line in the plant. Students’ assignments were to contact companies and request
the assessment to be done by the plants’ management. The manufacturing executives
were assured that information about the company’s name, location and product detail
will be confidential and will not be revealed in the publication. They were informed
that the lean assessment would help them identify areas of productivity lag and
opportunities for improvement.

Lean assessment
The assessment tool used in our study is an excel spreadsheet developed by
Quarterman Lee at Strategos Inc (Lee, 2004). Nine key areas of manufacturing are
evaluated by this assessment; each ranks the plant’s performance as a percentage.
Participants will be asked to answer three to six questions for each area, namely:
(1) inventory;
(2) team approach;
(3) processes;
(4) maintenance;
(5) layout/handling;
(6) suppliers;
 (7) setups; Applying lean
(8) quality; and assessment tools
(9) scheduling/control.
Appendix shows the assessment tool.
The questions in each area attempt to focus on the key performances. In the section
of inventory control, participants are asked to identify the percentage of middle and 631
upper managers who can state from memory the turnover rate and purpose of
work-in-process (WIP), finished goods and raw materials. Two other questions in this
section are related to the annual inventory turnover and its ratio to industry standard.
In the second area of “The Team Approach”, the first question asks about the
organization type and the respondent has to choose one from the following: exploitive,
bureaucratic, consultive, participative, and highly participative.
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There are five other questions in this section that are related to the compensation
type for the shop floor workers, job security, annual personnel turnover, teambuilding
training and active participation of in teams for all personnel.
The third section, process, evaluates the process and it assesses how lean the
production system has been designed. The first question in this area inquires about the
percentage of products that go through same machines. This is cross-loading or
batching that should be avoided if possible for lean approach. The second question is
about the size of equipment. In a “process type layout” that is also called “departmental
type layout” (Chase et al., 2004), the emphasis is on having similar machines in one area
and the goal is to buy a few large-scale equipments as opposed to purchasing more of
small-scale machines. The purpose is to minimize investments since the machine that
has twice the rated capacity of a smaller machine may cost only 20 percent more. But in
lean and cellular manufacturing, the goal is to have machines that are good match for
the cell configuration. Interested readers can obtain more information about machine
design requirements for lean production system from Arinez (2000). Arinez in his
unpublished doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated
the machinery design requirements for OEM from a system engineering perspective by
applying the principle of system decomposition (Cochran, 1999) and axiomatic design
(Suh, 1990). The third and fourth questions inquire about the product mix and volume
flexibilities. Again, in a robust production system design, product mix and variation in
volume within a range can be well tolerated without affecting the operation and unit
cost. The question five investigates the plant target operating capacity. In a traditional
manufacturing, the goal is to run equipment at almost 100 percent capacity to
maximize return on investment, while the goal in lean production is to balance the flow
and run equipment below their maximum capacity. The last question is to rate the
overall bias of the plant’s process selection with respect to technology level.
The fourth section, maintenance, evaluates the manufacturing system maintenance,
equipment downtime and uptime and the rigor of preventive maintenance. Again, we
have to emphasize that preventive maintenance must be even stricter in lean
manufacturing, since losing any equipment due to unexpected downtime in a cell
would result into stopping the operation in the cell.
The fifth section, layout and handling, evaluates the space allocated to inventory,
types of layout in terms of process as opposed to cell/flow-line/product type layout
(Chase et al., 2004). The third question in this section inquires about material
 MD movement to see if it is bulky and has complex flow patterns or small with direct flow
43,4 pattern. The next question is about housekeeping to understand how well the plant is
kept clean and tidy. The last question is how easy visitors can identify the processes
and their sequence. This is called “Visual Factory” and it is changing many plants in
the west to become more orderly.
The sixth area, suppliers, looks into supply chain design/management. Questions in
632 this section investigate the average number of suppliers for each raw material or
purchased item, outsourcing, incoming inspection, where and how often supplies are
delivered. The objectives of lean manufacturing and supply chain management are to:
make only those items that are in core competencies and outsource the other ones,
having fewer suppliers, and treat suppliers as partners or even as members or division
of the same firm as in “vertical integration” but actually in “Virtual Integration”
(Magretta, 1998).
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The seventh section, setups, measures setup time for equipments and efforts in setup
time reduction. The quick setup or change over is a must for a lean production system.
The eighth section, quality, investigates the statistical process control (SPC)
training, portion of operations that are using the SPC, and who is doing it (operator or
quality control office). The last question is about the overall defect rate.
Finally, the last section is scheduling and control. The first question that could also
be related to the production system design looks into the flow of the materials into
processes without interruptions (no intermediate storage). The second question
investigates the usage of “Kanban” as it relates to “Pull” production. Where pull means
make to order while push means make to stock. The last question is about on-time
delivery performance of finished goods to customers.
A score between zero and four is given for each response in the assessment. Scores
are then totaled for each of the nine areas. The results are then displayed in the score
worksheet and finally a lean profile chart is created to display the current status of the
plant and the gap from their specific lean targets. Therefore, the results are
immediately available for the manufacturing executives when they complete the
questionnaire. We will explain more about the score worksheet and the lean profile in
the next section.

Assessment results
MBA students collected a total of 65 plants’ assessments in a two-week period in May
2004. This represents more than 71 percent participation by 91 students. The reason
for our success is due to several factors: ease of use of the assessment tool, immediate
feedback and results for plants’ executives from the score worksheet and the lean
profile. Some manufacturing executives were so excited in doing the assessment that
they stayed past midnight to complete the assessment to obtain the results and even
requested additional feedback from us. We should mention that the students’
participation was on a voluntary basis but also the participants earned bonus points to
help them to get a better grade!
After collecting all the assessments, the plants were categorized according to their
industry: electronics, telecommunication and wireless, computer, food and beverage,
garment, chemical, oil, printing, biotechnology, and a few others. We have decided to
only report on the first three industries. These are 20 plants that can be labeled as
hi-tech industry. There are nine manufacturing plants in electronics, seven plants in
 telecommunications and wireless, and the last four are computer plants. Some plants Applying lean
are joint ventures with global companies with sales exceeding billions in US dollars. assessment tools
The reasons for reporting on 20 selected plants in hi-tech industries are due to sizeable
assessments, similar process, and their product line.
We have analyzed the data for each of the three industries. Table I shows the
average score for the electronics. The first column is the list of nine key areas or
sections in the assessment. The second column is the section points, the total score for 633
each section. We are using the average score for nine plants in electronics in this
column, while for individual plant the scores are the actual numbers in the
assessment. The third column is the number of questions in each section. The fourth
column, section AVG, is calculated by dividing section points (second column) by the
number of questions in that section (third column). Sections percentages (fifth
column) are calculated by dividing the section average by four (the maximum
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possible score). The sixth column is the “strategic impact factor”. This is a very
important factor that is set by the user that reflects the relative importance of the
section in relation to other sections. Total of all sections should equal 100 percent.
The last column in the score worksheet shows the section target, it is calculated by
dividing strategic impact factor (sixth column) by the maximum number in that
column. In Table I, all section targets are at 100 percent since we are using identical
strategic impact factors for all sections. But user can use different strategic impact
factors based on their preferences.
Table I shows the score for the electronics that are based on average scores for the
nine plants in the assessment. Electronics have the highest score 71 percent, in
maintenance and their lowest score is in inventory at 45 percent. It is interesting that
there are significant gaps from the targets.
Finally a “Lean Profile” chart is generated based on the results from, the score
worksheet. Figure 1 shows the lean profile for the electronics. This is a very useful
chart that shows the current state of electronics in the nine key areas of

Section Number of Section Section Strategic impact Section target

Section points quest average (percent) factor (percent) (percent)

1.0 5.44 3 1.81 45 11.1 100

Inventory
2.0 Teams 14.89 6 2.48 62 11.1 100
3.0 Process 12.00 6 2.00 50 11.1 100
4.0 14.11 5 2.82 71 11.1 100
Maintenance
5.0 Layout 13.89 5 2.78 69 11.1 100
6.0 Supplier 9.11 5 1.82 46 11.1 100
7.0 Setup 7.33 3 2.44 61 11.1 100
8.0 Quality 10.11 4 2.53 63 11.1 100
9.0 7.89 3 2.63 66 11.1 100
Scheduling
Sum (in 100 Table I.
percent) Score worksheet for
Max (in 11.1 electronics industry (nine
percent) plants) – average score
 MD
43,4

634
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Figure 1.
Lean profile of electronics

manufacturing, their target, and the gap between the actual and the target. There
are major gaps from the current state of plants in electronics industry from the
lean targets. This observation was also apparent in the score worksheet. Again,
we have to remind the reader, that people who conducted the assessment had the
results available to them immediately upon completion of the questionnaire in the
assessment.
Next, we could look at the three industries in comparison charts. Figure 2 shows the
actual performance in terms of section percentages from the score worksheets for all
nine key areas for the three selected industries.
As you can see in Figure 2, no one sector is the leader in all sections. Electronics has
the lead in maintenance and layout. Telecommunication and wireless companies have
higher scores in inventory and team approach. The computer sector leads in process,
suppliers, setup, quality, and scheduling. We can somehow conclude that the computer
sector is performing better than others in hi-tech industries. This is not a surprise
finding, because of the intense competition in the computer industry, companies are
forced to be more agile (process), have good supply chain management (supplier), and
to meet individual customer demand and specification (setup, quality, scheduling). But,
we would like to caution about generalization of these results due to small number of
plants in our study.
We decided to further anaylze data to better understand the state of the lean
manufacturing in hi-tech industries. There are two important aspects in lean
manufacturing, human and nonhuman. The nonhuman is the design of the production
process dealing with the layout, inventory, scheduling, supply chain, and others. The
human aspect which is also of equal importance is the organizational design. This
aspect is somehow evaluated in the “team approach” of the assessment that contains
six questions about the organization type, job security, personnel turnover, team
 Applying lean
assessment tools

635
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Figure 2.
Performance in key
manufacturing areas by 20
selected plants in hi-tech
industries

acitivity and training. Figures 3-8 show the charts for these sub-categrories for the
20 plants in the hi-tech industry.
Our analysis shed some light about the organization structure in 20 selected plants
in hi-tech industries in China. More than 60 percent have participative or highly
participative organization type. Compensation in terms of salary including annual
bonus are the norm with 70 percent of factory workers, while only 20 percent receive
hourly wages. Job security is very high since only 10 percent of plants reported
frequent annual layoffs. The last two figures display the teambuilding and team

Figure 3.
Organization type in 20
selected plants in hi-tech
industries
 MD
43,4

636
Figure 4.
Compensation of factory
workers for 20 selected
plants in hi-tech industries
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Figure 5.
Job security in 20 selected
plants in hi-tech industries

Figure 6.
Annual personnel
turnover in 20 selected
plants in hi-tech industries
 activities. The results are somehow similar, since about 50 percent of plants reported Applying lean
that 30-100 percent of their total personnel receive teambuilding training and who are assessment tools
also active members of teams in the plants in problem solving, quality teams, and work
teams. Again, we caution about generalization of these results due to small number of
plants in our study.

Conclusion 637
Lean manufacturing improves material handling, inventory, quality, scheduling,
personnel and customer satisfaction. Competitive forces are challenging manufacturers
to produce products of higher quality at a lower price. The primary explanation offered
by analysts and industry leaders with regard to moving factories to China can be
summarized by lower production cost. It was our intention to assess the state of lean
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manufacturing in some selected manufacturing plants in China in order to explain or

challenge lean manufacturing as one reason for the lower production costs in China.
Competitiveness is critical for Chinese companies as they are starting to produce and
market their own brands globally and have even launched manufacturing facilities in
western countries. In order to stay competitive, these companies should improve their
manufacturing operations. Our assessment in a few selected companies in hi-tech
industry has showed a somewhat significant gap from the lean target. But the
assessment has also identified opportunities for improvement in those areas where the
current plant standing is below the benchmark (maximum score for each question).

Figure 7.
Percentage of personnel
receiving teambuilding
training at 20 selected
plants in hi-tech industries

Figure 8.
Percentage of personnel
who are active members of
formal work teams,
quality teams, or
problem-solving teams in
20 selected plants in
hi-tech industries
 MD References
43,4 Arinez, J.F. (2000), “An equipment design approach for achieving manufacturing system design
requirements”, PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chase, R.B., Jacobs, F.R. and Aquilano, N.J. (2004), Operations Management for Competitive
Advantage, 10th ed., Irwin-McGraw Hill, New York, NY.
Cochran, D.S. (1999), “The production system design and deployment framework”, Proceedings
638 of the 1999 SAE International Automotive Manufacturing Conference, Detroit, MI, 11-13
May.
Cochran, D., Duda, J., Linck, J. and Taj, S. (1998), “Design of manufacturing cells using a
combination of new and existing equipment”, Proceedings of the 9th Annual Meeting of the
Production and Operations Management Society, Santa Fe, NM, 28-31 March.
Duda, J., Castaneda-Vega, J., Cochran, D., Baur, M., Anger, R. and Taj, S. (1999), “Application of a
lean cellular design decomposition to automotive component manufacturing system
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design”, Proceedings of the 1999 SAE International Automotive Manufacturing

Conference, Detroit, MI, 11-13 May.
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system for capital intensive automotive component”, Proceedings of the Third World
Congress on Intelligent Manufacturing Processes and Systems, Cambridge, MA, 28-30 June.
Goodson, E. (2002), “Read a plant fast”, Harvard Business Review, May, pp. 105-13.
Lee, Q. (2004), “Lean manufacturing strategy”, Strategos, available at: www.strategosinc.com/
Liker, J.L. (1997), Becoming Lean – Inside Stories of U.S. Manufacturers, Productivity Press,
Portland, OR.
Liker, J.L. (2004), Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest
Manufacturer, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Magretta, J. (1998), “The power of virtual integration: an interview with Dell computer’s Michael
Dell”, Harvard Business Review, March-April, pp. 73-84.
Suh, N.P. (1990), Principles of Design, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Taj, S. and Ghorashyzadeh, Y. (2003), “Strategic issues for planning manufacturing
plant/facilities”, Proceedings of the European Applied Business Research Conference,
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manufacturing cells”, Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, Washington, DC,
13-16 December.
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in mind”, paper presented at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Production and
Operations Management Society, San Antonio, TX, 1-4 April.
Womack, J. and Jones, D. (1996), Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your
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pp. 92-9.

Appendix. Lean assessment tool developed by Strategos, Inc.

This assessment helps to investigate, evaluate, and measure nine key areas of manufacturing.
The result is a deeper understanding of key issues, problem areas, and potential solutions.
 Response X Applying lean
assessment tools
1.0 Inventory
1.1 For the categories of finished 0-6 percent
goods, 7-55 percent
work-in-process (WIP) and 56-80 percent
purchased/raw 81-93 percent
materials, what portion of middle 94-100 percent
639
and upper managers can state from
memory the current turnover and
the purpose of each type?
1.2 What is the overall inventory 0-3
turnover, including finished goods, 4-6
WIP and purchased/raw material? 7-12
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13-24
25 þ
1.3 What is the ratio of inventory # 1.0
turnover to the industry average? 1.1-2.0
2.1-4.0
4.1-8.0
8.1 þ

2.0 The team approach

2.1 What is the organization type? Exploitive
Bureaucratic
Consultive
Participative
Highly participative
2.2 How are workers on the factory Individual incentive
floor compensated? Hourly wage
Group incentive
Salary
Salary þ Annual bonus
2.3 To what extent do people have job Layoffs every year
security? Transfers and retraining
reduce layoffs
Layoffs are rare
2.4 What is the annual personnel 31 percent þ
turnover? 14-30 percent
7-11 percent
3-6 percent
0-2 percent
2.5 What percentage of personnel , 5 percent
(ALL Personnel) have received at 6-10 percent
least 11-30 percent
eight hours of teambuilding 31-90 percent
training? 91-100 percent
2.6 What percentage of personnel are , 5 percent
active members of formal work 6-10 percent
teams, quality teams, or 11-30 percent
problem-solving teams? 31-90 percent
91-100 percent
(continued) Table AI.
 MD Response X
43,4
3.0 Processes
3.1 How many large-scale machines or 4þ
single-process areas are in the 3
plant through which 50 percent or 2
more of different products must 1
640 pass? 0
3.2 How would you rate the overall Large scale
bias of the plant’s process selection Medium/mixed
with respect to scale? Small scale
3.3 How easy is it to shift output when Very difficult
the product mix changes? Moderately difficult
Easy
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3.4 How easy is it to alter the total Very difficult

production rate by ^15 percent? Moderately difficult
Easy
3.5 What is management’s target 96-100 percent
operating capacity for individual 91-95 percent
departments or machines? 86-90 percent
76-85 percent
50-75 percent
3.6 How would you rate the overall Complex technologies
bias of the plant’s process Moderate/mixed
selection with respect to Simple technologies
technology level?

4.0 Maintenance
4.1 Describe equipment records and Nonexistent
data. Include records of uptime, Substantially complete
repair history, and spare Complete and accurate
parts. Include repair and parts
manuals
4.2 Excluding new installations 71-90 percent
and construction projects, 51-70 percent
what percentage of 26-50 percent
maintenance hours 11-25 percent
is unplanned, unexpected, or 0-10 percent
emergency?
4.3 Does maintenance have and No PM
follow a defined preventive 1-10 percent coverage
schedule? 11-30 percent coverage
31-90 percent coverage
91 percent þ coverage
4.4 Do equipment breakdowns limit or Often
interrupt production? Occasionally
Frequently
4.5 What is the overall average Unknown
availability of plant equipment? 0-75 percent
76-90 percent
91-95 percent
96-100 percent

Table AI. (continued)

 Response X Applying lean
assessment tools
5.0 Layout and handling
5.1 What portion of total space is used 71-100 percent
for storage and material handling? 46-70 percent
30-45 percent
16-30 percent
0-15 percent 641
5.2 What portion of the plant space is 71-100 percent
organized by function or process 46-70 percent
type? 30-45 percent
16-30 percent
0-15 percent
5.3 How would you characterize Pallet-size (or larger) loads,
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material movement? long distances (.100 ft),

complex flow patterns,
confusion, and lost material
Mostly tote-size loads, bus-route
transport, and intermediate
distances
Tote-size or smaller
loads, short distances
(, 25 ft),
simple and direct flow pattern
5.4 How would you rate overall Messy, filthy, confused
housekeeping and appearance of Dirty
the plant? Some dirt, occasional mess
Clean
Spotless, neat, and tidy
5.5 How well could a stranger walking Impossible to see any logic or flow
through your plant identify the sequence
processes and their sequence? Most processes are apparent with
some study. Most sequences are visible
Processes and their sequences are
immediately visible

6.0 Suppliers Response X

6.1 What is the average number of 2.5 þ
suppliers for each raw material or 1.6-2.4
purchased item? 1.3-1.7
1.2-1.4
1.0-1.1
6.2 On average, how often, in months, 1-11
are items put up for re-sourcing? 12-17
18-23
24-36
36 þ
6.3 What portion of raw material and 0 percent
purchased parts comes from 1-10 percent
qualified suppliers with no need for 11-30 percent
incoming inspection? 31-70 percent
70-100 percent
(continued) Table AI.
 MD Response X
43,4
6.4 What portion of raw material and 0 percent
purchased items is delivered 1-10 percent
directly to the point of use 11-30 percent
without incoming inspection or 31-70 percent
storage?
642 70-100 percent
6.5 What portion of raw materials and 0 percent
purchased parts is delivered more 1-10 percent
than once per week? 11-30 percent
31-70 percent
70-100 percent
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7.0 Setups
7.1 What is the average overall setup 61 þ
time (in minutes) for major 29-60
equipment? 16-30
10-15
0-9
7.2 What portion of machine operators 0 percent
have had formal training in rapid 1-6 percent
Setup techniques? 7-18 percent
19-42 percent
43-100 percent
7.3 To what extent are managers and Not at all
workers measured and judged on Informal tracking and review
setup performance? Setups tracked, Performance in job
description

8.0 Quality
8.1 What portion of total employees 0-6 percent
have had basic SPC training? 7-55 percent
56-80 percent
81-93 percent
94-100 percent
8.2 What portion of operations are 0 percent
controlled with Statistical process 1-10 percent
control (SPC) 11-30 percent
31-70 percent
71-100 percent
8.3 What portion of the SPC that is 0 percent
done is accomplished by operators 1-10 percent
as opposed to quality or 11-30 percent
engineering specialists? 31-70 percent
71-100 percent
8.4 What is the overall defect rate? 0 percent
1-10 percent
11-30 percent
31-70 percent
71-100 percent
9.0 Scheduling/control
Table AI. (continued)
 Response X Applying lean
assessment tools
9.1 What portion of work-in-process 0 percent
flows directly from one operation 1-10 percent
to the next without intermediate 11-35 percent
storage? 36-85 percent
86-100 percent
9.2 What portion of work-in-process is 0 percent 643
under Kanban or Broadcast control 1-10 percent
11-35 percent
36-85 percent
86-100 percent
9.3 What is the on-time delivery 0-50 percent
performance? 51-70 percent
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71-80 percent
81-95 percent
95-100 percent Table AI.
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