The Study On Lean Transformation And Self-Assessment In Manufacturing Enterprise

Lean enterprise is a new business organization that delivers value to its stakeholders, with little or no superfluous consumption of resources (materials, human capital, time, physical plant, equipment, information, energy). This organization based on lean production and guided by lean thinking, is competitive, taking the worth process of the enterprise as the content, taking the customer's worth as the final purpose, taking promoting the core competencies of the business enterprise as the target. Lean production has appeared for more than ten years. Over the past years, lean production created the miracle of re-engineering in manufacturing in 20^th century. It is applied widely in mobile, aerospace, electronic industry, etc. We've seen numerous examples of amazing improvements in a specific activity in a single company. But these experiences have made us know that lean techniques are not only limited in the field of discrete activities. Many enterprises realize the importance of transformation to lean enterprise. This strategy can reduce the cost and help the organization response quickly in production life cycle.Manufacturing is the foundation of the national economy. In our country, the methods of management fall behind in a lot of manufacturing enterprises, and the productivity is low. With the development of market economy, the enterprises have to adapt the request of new time. So it is necessary for the enterprises to transform to lean enterprise in order to improve the level of management as soon as possible.Based on the latest outcome of abroad research on lean enterprise transformation, combining the present condition of lean production in our manufacturing enterprises, this article expounds the characteristics and purpose of lean enterprises. It mainly analyzes why so many lean transformation efforts fail? What is lean enterprise? How to transform to lean enterprise? How to assess the transformation?This article gives an enterprise level Transformation to lean roadmap based on the strategy theory and PDCA cycle. The Roadmap is targeted for use by the senior leadership team. It also provides lean enterprise self-assessment tool to define continuously and re-define their directions and goals according to the self-assessment methods of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, European Quality Award, ISO9000, and CMM, etc. The tool is the means of determining thedegree to which their goals are being achieves. It aims to offer a reference to the manufacturing enterprise and to improve the level of management and the international competitiveness of enterprises.This article tries to break the limits of applying lean techniques to discrete activities and analyzes the lean transformation roadmap systematically from strategy view. Lean enterprise self-assessment tool is different from traditional performance measures. The enterprise which is transforming to lean enterprise assesses the lean degree itself. At the same time, this method determines the lean degree.