Research On Key Factors And Evaluation System Of Lean Production In Automobile Assembly Industry

At present,the scale of China manufacturing is growing larger and larger,but some problems still remain,such as low productivity,high cost,low added value and inferior product quality.Particularly,there is a huge gap of management level compared to some developed countries like US and Japan.The management level of a considerable number of business firms is relatively low,even some small and medium-sized enterprises are still in the stage of experience management.In order to eliminate various kinds of waste during production process,thus reduce overall cost and improve productivity in business firms,Lean Production methods and approaches are increasingly widely applied in industrial manufacturing.In the course of decades of development,through the implementation of Lean Production,Chinese enterprises have made some progress in reducing manpower,equipment costs and inventory,and shortening the development time of new products.However,compared with developed countries such as Japan and the United States,there is still a big gap.An explanation is that China has a very different social and cultural background from Japan and the United States,on the other hand,enterprises usually fail to fully consider their own lean level.Some managers can only qualitatively describe the leanness levels but fail to quantitatively analyze them.This has caused companies incapable of adopting a suitable lean production method based on their own leanness level and production characteristics,and the lack of clear improvement targets.Therefore,lean production encountered many obstacles in the implementation process.This paper mainly studies the key factors and evaluation system of lean production implementation in special-purpose vehicle assembly industry through the following aspects:1.By reading the relevant research materials of leanness assessment,the current research status of such problems was understood.Based on the analysis of the current research status,the research deficiencies mainly exist in that industry diversity has not been fully considered.On this basis,the research content and key issues to be fixed are proposed;2.Through the application of balanced scorecard the framework of leanness assessment system was designed,the relationship between the strategic goals of special vehicle assembly enterprises and lean production were analyzed,then combined with the characteristics of the special vehicle assembly industry,a comprehensive criteria system including both quantitative and qualitative factors was established;3.A key performance indicator identification method based on principal component analysis was proposed.Principal component analysis was applied to identify key factors of lean performance of special vehicle assembly industry,and the quantitative criteria was weighted.4.Based on fuzzy logic a quantitative analysis method for qualitative criteria was proposed.The quantitative criteria in the principal component was analyzed by SPA,and a comprehensive leanness assessment model was proposed.The contribution rate of each lean dimension was analyzed,and the leanness condition of each dimension was described.Finally,the feasibility and practicability of the assessment model were analyzed through case study.Generally,in this study,a leanness assessment method suitable for the special vehicle assembly industry was constructed,which can objectively measure the lean performance of business firms,assist the managers to accurately identify the advantages and disadvantages of the enterprise to implement lean production,thus the lean practice could be guided.