Reliability in Lean Systems

Implementation of Lean manufacturing systems often turn into expensive hit-or-miss propositions. Whereas many organizations that lack immediate success quickly abandon their ‘Lean’ plans in hopes that the next great marketing panacea will solve their efficiency woes, organizations that experience early success often have difficulty in sustaining their Lean efforts. To further exacerbate the dilemma, knowledge of the reliability of Lean systems is currently inadequate. This paper proposes a contemporary Lean paradigm – reliability in Lean systems – through the development of an innovative Lean System Reliability model (LSRM). Principally, LSRM models the reliability of Lean subsystems as a basis for determining the reliability of Lean systems as a whole. Lean subsystems, in turn, consist of reliability measures for Lean components. Once principal components analysis techniques are employed to determine critical subsystems, value stream mapping is used to illustrate the critical subsystem workflow sequence. Monte Carlo simulations are performed for the Lean system, its subsystems, and components and are then compared with historical data to determine the adequacy of the LSRM model. In addition, a regression model is developed to ascertain the contribution of LSRM towards predicting % on time delivery.