Lean Implementation In Fujitsu

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Fujitsu ltd

Fujitsu offers solutions and system integration services aiming on provision of information system consulting as well as integration, setting up of infrastructure services focused on outsourcing services. Fujitsu provides information system products, for example, servers plus storage systems which are the vital structures in information systems. More so, the company provides network products. These products include mobile phones, base stations, systems that provide optical transmissions, among other communications products.

Services

The Company’s services business has a huge market share in Japan and holds the third-largest share in communication services and products provision worldwide. Fujitsu provides products and services in a number of countries as well as regions; among them is Europe, the Americas, Asia, not forgetting the Oceania region. The company mainly relies on outsourcing services, whereby through the network of just about a hundred datacenters in sixteen countries around the world, mostly in Japan and countries in Europe. The company is able to meet a wide range of the customer needs. Among other strong points, the products and services simplify the operation of the clients’ information and communication technology (ICT) systems, in addition, they facilitate in making their operations greener.

The company’s strengths mainly lie in its global services organization, great experience in large-scale production, availability of advanced systems, in addition to, the technological capability to sustain these operations. Fujitsu utilizes these abilities to help different customers from different countries, regions as well as languages in using ICT systems. More so, the company works with government organizations across the world.

In system products, the company has a variety of offerings to meet the requirements of clients around the globe. These comprise of sophisticated as well as highly dependable mainframe and unique servers that support the information systems of organization and that are outfitted with proprietary CPUs—Fujitsu being one among the few global ICT organizations with the expertise to produce its own processor chips. The company also provides x86 servers which are used in cloud computing along with other promising business ventures, not forgetting, storage systems that are able to store the ever increasing huge amounts of data.

Problems faced by Fujitsu

Fujitsu Ltd has been facing hard economic times such that in the recent past it had said it would eliminate 16,400 jobs, this amounts to nearly 10 percent of its worldwide work force as it responds with the decline in technology spending. Fujitsu is one of Japan's main producers of personal computers, semiconductors as well as other communication gear. It joins NEC, Matsushita Electric in addition to other Japanese electronics companies that have decided on taking sweeping cutbacks. However, Fujitsu's issues run deeper than those of most of its rivals, and its downsizing in Japan will consequently include attrition along with the dismissal of part-time employees. The company has experienced loads of un-productive resources wastage by its employees through the time taken in production, over processing as well as production of faulty products. There was massive disorganization in the company’s warehousing which also complicated supply of components needed for production.

Fujitsu is aiming at cutting production lines and move away from some the businesses such as manufacturing of hard disk drives used on desktop computers. The company will instead focus on production of software along with service operations across its business segments, thereby diverting more resources to main technology and products, for instance mobile phone technology in addition to highly developed electronic devices.

Lean management

Lean production refers to management approaches initially developed by Toyota that mainly focused on the elimination of waste in all forms. Lean management has been tremendously successful in large high volume companies. In essence, lean management is based on maintaining value with less work. The main idea is to make the most of customer value while reducing waste. Basically, lean involves the creation of more value for customers wants with a smaller number of resources. A lean organization recognizes its customer value and centers its fundamental processes to incessantly increase it. The crucial goal is to offer ideal value to the customer by means of an ideal value creation procedure that has no waste (Jackson, Jones, & Bodek, 2006).

Never the less, several small to medium size low volume companies have not fully realized the potential benefits of a lean management system. The company should aim at increasing the capacity and throughput levels, reducing lead-times, and improving quality as well as efficiency while reducing the operating expenses. By implementing the basic lean tools such as 5S, work standardization, line balancing, visual controls, point of use storage, as well as quality at the source, Fujitsu was able to rapidly increase throughput and reduce quality defects by 80%

Lean managements is widely accepted and used by a number of the majority of the world’s major manufacturers. It comes in many forms and has many names, for instance, Toyota Production System or Nissan Production Way. The base of Lean management, however, mainly contains the fundamental elements that make it function properly. Lean contains five main elements: Manufacturing Flow, process organization, Process Control, Metrics in addition to Logistics. Lean management, when appropriately implemented, allows companies to produce quality products and services at a faster rate and more efficiently. It eliminates waste in the system that the client does not want to pay for. Many small companies have yet to embrace Lean management for a variety of reasons. These companies either have never been exposed to Lean or just lack the knowledge or knowhow to implement it. Some do not see value in sending employees to expensive training because of a lack of knowledge of what Lean is and can do the company. The main objectives of implementing lean in Fujitsu were to achieve a minimum throughput rate; eliminate overtime; improve quality as well as decrease rework.

The conditions at the company were poor before the Lean implementation. Work stations were much cluttered with scrap and rework parts. Workers were constantly leaving their work stations to look for parts, tools, and/or hardware. The work load in the stations was not balanced. Units were being pulled offline to have them repaired. The initial production and service provision was very slow with massive waste.

Lean implementation in Fujitsu

The primary, and most vital, step in Lean implementation is the 5S. The 5 S approach can be defined as the following: Sort: the required and the unnecessary items are separated; straighten: items are set in a way that they are effortlessly accessible; the items should be labeled. The office should be created to define places for each team member as well as resources; Shine: the working area should be maintained in clean and bright conditions, the conditions in a working place have a huge impression on the customers; Standardize: the last two steps involve supporting and maintaining the 5S office structure. As Liker (2004) explains, process standardization is an essential condition for incessantly enhanced processes to get better value and improved productivity. Nevertheless, some steps of the process are always similar and could be standardized in order to minimize rework as well as wastes. It is a methodology for keeping a clean, organized workstation. Each Station Lead, the chosen leader within each station, should be tasked with making sure his workers clean their different areas and make sure set aside only what was needed. To help reducing pileups of damaged parts, red tag bins should be placed in selected areas on the working floor. This allows Station Leads to tag damaged or defective products with a description of the issues and get them out of the way. This also facilitates with inventory problems so the parts are correctly managed. Hardware shelves should be set up in the stations and labeled bins put in place for each variation of hardware. Above these shelves, a large process board should be installed with adscription of the process as well as pictures that detail each step. Shadow-boards should be constructed to organize the tools required in each station. The shadow boards have a marked spot for each and every tool so the Lead can easily see if anything is missing at the end of the day. There is a major issue with workers always leaving their workstations to find parts, hardware, and/or tools. Preferably, the employees should not have to leave the workstation to complete their jobs. The hardware problems can be cleared by using the organized shelves described previously. Tool lists should be compiled by the Station Leads. Once the shadow boards are in place, tools should be purchased to replace missing tools and all tools should be marked by station. Finally, parts should be dealt with. The bills of materials should be split into stations to make different parts lists. At each station, locations should be selected for each part and marked with label that contained the part number and part description. This not only makes it simpler for the employees to locate the required parts, but also makes it easier for the suppliers to replenish supplies. Station Leads should be issued with material count sheets specific to their working stations. These sheets allows employees to take a physical count of what they have on-hand and to ask for additional parts from inventory depending on the following day’s scheduled production. Line Balancing and Subassemblies, once all workstations have everything that is needed, production rates will begin to increase, which exposes bottlenecks. Time should be spent with the quality control group to discuss the quality problems and how to resolve them. An amaretto Analysis should be prepared to determine the most common quality problems. Once these issues are documented, check sheets for each station should be devised so as to identify main quality features to check before the unit is moved to the next station. Station Leaders should be given accountability for items on their required check sheets and held responsible for quality problems found in the final inspection. Once the check sheets are set in place and have become abnormal part of the process, quality should improve rapidly. After a few weeks of use, there should be a decrease in quality problems. The decline in quality issues also equally decreases the amount of rework required per unit warehousing. Logistics is an issue that plagues the suppliers’ inability to find parts fast and efficiently. The warehouse attics should be spread across five buildings, with limited organization. Before starting to organize these stores, a record of the racks as well as a layout of each building should be drawn in CAD to create a plan. From there, an inventory of all parts should be done, recording not only part quantities, but also locations. This data shows that the main stores comingled current production parts, obsolete parts and service parts. This organization would facilitate in reduction of waste of space. A layout plan should be developed to better organize the warehouses. This includes removing all obsolete parts, and separating the current model parts from the previous model parts. An Incoming Material Staging Area should be allocated to allow the unloading of containers, inventorying by part number prior to storage. Afterwards, the warehouses should be organized making it easier for the material handlers to find.

A possible solution that can be used to attain good quality in the first time is by implementing an andon system. Implementation of an andon system in a service environment can be done by the use of standard checklists that can facilitate the company to make sure that each and every deliverable Lean implementation in service organization necessity is integrated in the deliverable. In addition, some significant milestone can be enhanced during the designing of the products so as to make certain that the final products satisfy all needs of the customer or manager (Ptacek & Motwani, 2011).

Advantages of implementing lean

The advantages o f lean implementation can be classified into three main categories; Operational, Administrative, and Strategic Improvements. However, most companies that are undertaking lean implementation most of the times consider operational improvements, principally due to common perception that Lean management only works on to the operations sector of the company. Nonetheless, Lean’s administrative as well as strategic advantages are similarly impressive. For instance, from a recent survey by the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership on forty of their customers who had implemented Lean management, distinctive improvements were noted in different areas. By implementing lean the lead time (Cycle Time) reduces by such huge margin, from the survey, most of the companies reduced the lead time by 90%. Productivity in the companies increased by 50% while the WIP Inventory decreased by 80%. The quality of the products and services offered improved by 80%. In addition the space utilized reduced by 75% (Ptacek & Motwani, 2011).

There are administrative enhancements as well. When an organization implements lean, reduction in the number of order processing errors is inevitable. The customer services of the company are streamlined such that the customers are no longer kept waiting on hold. With lean management there is a notable reduction in the amount of paperwork in the office, more so, the staffing demands reduce as well, thereby making it easy for same number of employees to work on more orders. Proper documentation along with streamlining of the steps taken in processing makes it possible to out-source for non-critical functions thus allowing the organization to concentrate their efforts on clients’ needs. The realization of job standards along with pre-employment profiling makes certain of the employing of only "above average "performers – envision the advantage to the company if everybody performs like the top 20% (Ptacek & Motwani, 2011).

Most companies that implement lean management do not effectively take advantage of the strategic improvements. Highly successful organizations often learn how to utilize these benefits by marketing them and turning them into more market shares. One good example involves a Midwestern industry that produces a common health care product. The industry has more or less than forty competitors, the third biggest company in the industry resolved to implement Lean managements principles. The industry’s regular lead-time was fifteen days, this company was no exception. By the end of the lean project implementation, the Company’s average lead-time had reduced to four days, without any products shipped in less than a week. So as to take advantage of these developments, the company started market campaigns, advertising so that clients would get the product in just ten days failure to which the order would end being free. Sales volume went up by 20% almost straight away (Jackson, Jones, & Bodek, 2006). After making the suitable changes so as to manage the new demand, the company started one more market campaign; for a10% premium, the company would ship the products in seven days. similarly, the sales increased by only 5% since the new clients needed the product in a week’s time, however, more than 30% of the existing clients also paid for the premium, even those that were already getting the product in less than a week. The outcome was that the company’s revenues increased by approximately 40% without any increase in labor as well as overhead costs

Conclusions

In this project, a Lean Manufacturing implementation can be successful instituted. However, the company must have astute leadership to encourage a Lean implementation. To have a successful implementation, buy-in must exist in the entire organization from top management down to the line workers. Upper management must stay engaged and constantly challenge employees to improve and develop higher value added work. As long as discipline is maintained the Lean tools will continue to work and expose new opportunities for improvement. Employees have to work tighter as a team, but will find that their jobs become easier with improvements. By attacking the bottlenecks as they appear, throughput should increase rapidly by a massive margin. Lean also decreases defects by a huge percentage and improves overall efficiency through the entire manufacturing process in a three month timeframe. . Lean management principles bear the promise of decreasing or even eliminating waste of time, money, and other resource in service production. This is done through the creation of a system that is well-organized, efficient, in addition to, truly responsive to the needs of the customers.

Nowadays, most large manufacturers are challenging their suppliers take up lean practices. Lean companies are in a position of being more responsive to new market trends, deliver services faster, in addition to prodding services less expensively compared to their non-lean competitors. Lean crosses all organization boundaries, it is applicable to all industrial functions, plus it impacts on the entire system – from the supply chain to customer base.