Kaizen Assembly: Designing, Constructing, and Managing a Lean Assembly Line June 28, 2006

Kaizen Assembly: Designing, Constructing, and Managing a Lean Assembly Line June 28, 2006

Chris OrtizCRC PressISBN: 0849371872www.kaizenassembly.com/book.htm

Keywords: Lean production, Kaizen

From the publisher

It is easy to learn the philosophy and the concepts of kaizen. It is quite another challenge to translate the philosophy into action. While most books expound on the underlying principles and theory, Kaizen Assembly: Designing, Constructing, and Managing a Lean Assembly Line takes you step-by-step through an actual Kaizen event. This approach demonstrates in detail the mindset, the processes, and the practical insight needed to transform your current assembly line into a world- class lean operation.

Chris Ortiz brings the experience of over 150 successful Kaizen events to the pages of this unique guide. Using clear, succinct, and unambiguous language rather than more general and esoteric terms found in other books, he explains how to implement waste reduction, 5S, time and motion studies, line balancing, quality-at-the-source, visual management, and workstation and assembly line design. Taking a unique approach, the book follows an example of the assembly process for an electric bike including illustrations of nearly every step along the way. Ortiz even includes the most valuable teaching tool of all: past mistakes, how they were overcome, and how to identify and avoid them.

Providing expert guidance that will last long after the consultants have left, Kaizen Assembly supplies the tools you need to make kaizen and lean assembly a permanent fixture at the heart of the shop floor.

^• presents step-by-step instruction on planning, implementing, and maintaining a successful lean manual assembly line;

^• designs an actual assembly line throughout the book to demonstrate each step and concept in detail;

^• includes more than 140 figures and illustrations to allow clear visualization of the workstation and line design;

^• emphasizes operator and supervisor training to build the proper infrastructure to support continuing improvement; and

^• explains the importance of management commitment as well as training, accountability, and monitoring.

Customer review from publisher's web site

“Lean Manufacturing at its Best! Rarely do you find such a book on lean manufacturing that truly lays out of what needs to get done to the production floor. I liked the fact that it is not filled with case studies and what this company did and that company did. I can use this well written book and make improvements to our assembly processes. The best chapter by far is the company kaizen program. Although I have been through many kaizen events, his system makes complete sense and I can see how we can incorporate it into our improvement efforts. It is easy to learn the philosophy and the concepts of kaizen. It is quite another challenge to translate the philosophy into action. While most books expound on the underlying principles and theory, Kaizen Assembly: Designing, Constructing, and Managing a Lean Assembly Line takes you step-by- step through an actual Kaizen event. This approach demonstrates in detail the mindset, the processes, and the practical insight needed to transform your current assembly line into a world- class lean operation.”

Reviews from www.amazon.com

“I have read plenty of books on kaizen and how it can be used in a lean manufacturing environment, and this one is by far the best I have come across. Kaizen Assembly provides so much information on assembly line design, I was first surprised Ortiz had unlocked his consulting vault. The chapter on conducting time studies has really helped me get a better understanding of how to do them. We struggled for a long time on this and I feel his system is the best. Ortiz clearly has been doing kaizen and kaizen events. The information in this book on how to conduct a kaizen event could have only been written by someone who has been in the kaizen trenches for some time. He brings together Kaizen and lean assembly in a language I can understand by showing real life examples of 5S, workstation design, visual management, and the seven wastes. His outline for planning and execution is again so perfectly mapped out; I am looking forward to trying out his implementation techniques.”

“I am not the kind of person who writes comments to books I have read. I pre- ordered this book with a lot of anticipation and it turned out to be what I expected... a useable guide to lean implementation. The author unveils his secrets for sure and I found almost every page to be something I can use. Our company has been trying to find tools and resources that can be used to help us and we intend to order more copies of Kaizen Assembly for our lean program. His focus is on organization and following procedure with with tools and techniques I can use.”