As a result of Globalization and high adverse business competition most of the organizations in manufacturing and service sectors have strive to adopt the philosophy of lean management to achieve the flexibility to meet the new challenges of elimination of wastes, production enhancement, reducing cost, improvement of quality and pushing innovation. The aim of the lean is to respond timely to the need of the customers and also adding value to them and whole organization. Thus the lean management coordinate and integrate long term planning and day to day continuous improvement targets to make the organization customer focused, flexible and ready for challenges.
The company for the implementation of lean is musoma fish processors one of the leading chilled nile perch fish manufactures in the local market of Tanzania. The assignment is divided into four sections, firstly describe about the main products and services, the main customers and the order qualifiers and winners of the company. Secondly gives lights to the main operational activities of the company, thirdly the literature review of the lean management and finally to the practical implementation of the concept in the company and its challenges.
THE MAIN PRODUCT AND CUSTOMERS OF MUSOMA FISH PROCESSORS.
Main product is the production of chilled fresh fish fillets and marinated fish fillets to the market to suit the variety of the needs and wants of the customers. Here the company is using only one species of fish Nile perch(Lates niloticus)for this process as its contain mostly of white meat and is abundant in lake Victoria. The main customers are mostly in the local markets of Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. Concentrated mainly on Hotels , restaurants and supermarkets.
ORDER QUALIFIER AND ORDER WINNER
These are both market and time specific. Order qualifier is the minimum criteria to exist in market, so they have to be as good as their opponents. Here the company has a good customer relationship, very keen in the feedback from the customers. Another factor is the knowledge about the market conditions and the capacity to accept the orders in low prices due to cheap labour costs.
Whilst the order winner is the competitive advantage maintained by the company than its competitors to win an order. Here the main point is the delivery speed of the company . The company can maintain a good delivery speed to most of the orders due to chilling technology than any other factories in that locality.
Moreover the quality of the products of chilled fish delivered, due to stringent hygiene processing under the norms of HACCP and ISO,22000 standards. Another
Category of order qualifier is the customization of the product according to the taste of the customers and finally to the brand identity of alpha in the geographical zone of East Africa.
MAIN OPERATION PROCESS
It is clear that as the company is mainly concentrated on the manufacture of chilled fish the main operational process here is the production process supported by three subsequent process such as procurement process ,stock management process and delivery process. In the production process the inputs, such as raw materials from the RM store and information from the production planning department is transferred to outputs based on customer specifications and quality specifications to sustain value for its customers.
Once the raw material is introduced to the shop floor it is directed to filleting section. The main activities in the filleting section is the deboning of the fish into fillets by fillterers and supervised by supervisor .It is then transferred to de-skinning section through trolleys, where the activities of removing the skin of the fillets took place. Then it is transferred to trimming section for the shaping of the fillets based on specifications.
After that it is transferred to marinating section for marinating the products, then to the freezer for chilling the product the optimum temperature of the freezer is -10c . Subsequent to that the chilled product is packed and store in chilled store for the delivery. The temperature of the whole process is maintained under 60c.Here the production process is controlled by the production, quality and maintenance department for the smooth function of the main operational process.
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1.raw material 2.filleting 3.skinning 4.trimming 5.marinating 6.
Chilling 7.packing 8.chill storage.
Layout of the main operational process
The subsequent process that supports the main operational process is the procurement process . The procurement process is mainly done by the store department under the observation of purchasing manager. The raw material is procured from the approved suppliers of the company. The company is following a strict procedures for the procurement of raw material from the suppliers because the item procured is highly perishable. The procurement is mainly done based on the strict adherence to Hazard Analysis Critical Control point (HACCP) and ISO 22,000 standards of the factory.
Stock management process is the second pillar of the production process. It is also done by the store department .Maintenance of the stock of the raw material for the production is done by this process. The raw material for the production process is released through this process in a FIFO order(First In First OUT).This helps to maintain the quality of the raw materials for production.
Delivery process is yet another pillar of the main process. It is the delivery of the finished goods to the end customers. It is mainly done in refer containers and trucks .Refer containers are mainly used to maintain the temperature of the product to preserve the quality. Delivery process is mainly done by the marketing department of the company .As shown earlier in the order winner category that the Delivery speed is one of the unique characteristic of the company.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The term lean was first invented by James womack, Daniel jones and Daniel Ross in the "The Machine that changed the World" (Womack et al., 1990).From the literatures it is clear that lean is rooted in Toyota production system. Actually lean management is an strategic approach for remaining competitive by finding out and eliminating the non value added steps in process, services and products, finally delivering value to the end customer(Womack and Jones,1996;Melton,2005).
From the literatures the key concepts of lean identified in general were continuous flow , just in time production , continuous improvements or kaizen, set up time reduction, pull production, jidoka, Takt time, cycle time, standardized work, kanban and failure prevention, creating a long term supply chain relationship .(Womack et al., 1990; Womack and Jones,2003; Pettersen,2009;Lean enterprise institute).
More over in journals similar to context of the organization in the assignment, it was observed that majorities are applying the concept of takt time(Rother and Shook, 1998) standardized work(Tapping and Fabrizio, 2000)just in time and jidoka for the achievements of continuous smooth flow of production and continuous improvement in food processing industries(Simons and Zokari,2005).
Takt time is used to communicate and bring into line the rate of production with the customer demand, thus to reduced the rate of over production which is a waste in these fish cutting company in the assignment. Over production means producing more than is needed in the next process upstream, causing buffer inventories (Rother and Shook, 1998).
Takt time is calculated by dividing available production time by customer demand. For example if the customer demand for the company is 250box of chilled fish in a two shift production 8 hours, of which 0.5hr break for each shift, then the takt time is 3.6minutes.So that cycle time of each process of the above mentioned main operation process should be check to synchronize with the takt time to reduce the wastage and continuous flow.
According to Imai (1997) standardized work is the basis of the success of Toyota production system and is the better way of job. It shows what, when, where, who and how work should be carried out to give satisfaction to customers. Work standards should be documented and circulated to all and should be established by the shop floor and are responsible for improving it. Coming to the features of the standardized work practices in manufacturing industries are top, easiest and Safeway to do the job ; a base for the training of the work forces; performance measure technique; a basis for further improvement.
Coming to the frame work available in the manufacturing firms similar to the assignment context is 5s and value stream mapping.5s means sort to distinguish between the value added and non value added and eliminate the latter. Straighten to keep the wanted items in proper place, easy for retrieval. Shine to keep the environment tidy. Standardize is
The methods to standardizing the previous steps and finally Sustain to maintain the procedures. Value stream mapping is visually mapping the information flow and material in the current state and preparing a future map with better methods and performance and value, main used frame work for lean.(Singh and Sharma,2009).
Coming to the authors(Womack et al., 1990) in their book " The machine that changed the world " address lean as a philosophy that focus on waste reduction and value improvement for customers, they give more importance to customer focus. Moreover Womack outline five basic principles for lean such as value for customers; value stream identification for products; product flow assignment; pull production for customers and finally work towards perfection.
The ideology of the lean is the reduction of waste from the authors it is obvious that anything that do not add value to process, product and service is a waste. According to Ohno, T. (1988) there are mostly seven types of wastes, such as Defects, inventory, overproduction, waiting, transporting, movement, excess movement. In addition another type of waste identified was the underutilized staffs. Ohno gives the contribution of small batch production, just in time and jidoka to the Toyota production system, which later contributed to the lean management. Single minute exchange dies (SMED) where the contribution of shingo(Shingo,1983) .
Moreover different authors focus different goals of lean; some focused internally, means focused on cost reduction initiatives (Likes, 2004;Feld,2001;Ohno,1988;Shingo,1984),but on contrast others focused externally to improve the customer satisfaction(Womack and Jones,2003;Womack et al., 1990;Bicheno,2004).Cooney(2002) argues that the possibility to become lean depend upon business conditions.
CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE
In some literatures found criticism of lean about the human aspects .Some authors are of the opinion that the lean production is giving enormous pressure to the shop floor and they suggest that the lean is dehumanising.(Garrahan and Stewart, 1992; Williams et al., 1992).But from the literatures it can reviewed that criticism is not up to the mark, modern authors give importance to human factors of employee motivation and empowerment in lean tools and techniques. Moreover in reviewed literature there found gaps in scope and lack of strategic outlook until recently (Hines et al.,2004) because everybody is simply trying to apply a sets of tools and techniques. Cooney(2002) argues that the possibility to become lean depend upon business conditions.
OPERATION BENEFITS EXPECTED
From the literatures of lean management one can expect benefits in overall performance of the firms, if it is successfully implemented. But it should have to expect in long term basis. Benefits such as less process waste, reduced inventory level, reduction in lead time of the process, platform for less rework, good knowledge about the process, improved supply chain efficiency, long term building relationship between suppliers and customers, increased customer satisfaction, overall improvement of the organizational structure, increasing competitive advantage ,continuous
Work flow, standardize work practices, continuous improvement of activities.
In lean production just in time deliveries and low inventory are the importance factors. keller et al. (1991) reports the importance of supplier in the implementation of lean. Lean implementation makes the manufacture to keep a long lasting relationship with suppliers, helps in open communication channels, annual supplier conference. Moreover lean concepts helps to select fewer approved suppliers in order to get just in time deliveries based on supplier's performance rating, which is mostly done by automobiles manufactures (Wuchu, Y.,2003)Selected suppliers are given training sessions in the factory in lean concepts and give them the knowledge of lean production and integrate them into their value stream as a team player.
EXPECTATION OF THE BENEFITS IN PRACTICAL SENSE
In Musoma fish processors value stream mapping is done in order to found out the value added steps and to eliminate the non value added steps in the process of fish chilling. For that mapping of the current situation (figure-2 in appendix) is done and based on the study a proposed future map (figure-3in appendix) for implementation is made. This mapping is done mainly due to implementation of lean management concepts. Based on the future map some changes in the process structure would expecting
In addition to that before the implementation of lean the process structure is in a zigzag manner consuming so much space, after the implementation of lean concepts it is expecting that the steps will arrange in a chronological order. Some of the time consuming process of the past have to club together, in proposed map filleting and skinning steps are clubbed together. Lot of unutilized workforce is seen, they need training to do multitask skills, and here the filleters and skinning operators expected to given training to do both jobs and it would help to club those steps also.
More over the inventory shows a remarkable reduction in expected map, before the implementation there is lot of inventory between the processes.
Expecting a remarkable change in the employee motivation and empowerment, managerial support, supply chain relationship with suppliers and customers, because the lean concepts are not a mere set of tools and techniques but also psychological concepts of humans.
It is expecting that if the company can implement the lean concept properly in their long run they can crop more competitive advantage. From the proposed study of the lean implementation in chilled production line shows there will be 16.6% of improvement in cycle time than of the previous and 74.8% of reduction in total lead time .which means lot of non value added steps are removed when becoming lean. The is also shown as current table(figure-4 in appendix) and future proposed table.(figure-5) in appendix
CHALLENGES
As the company is situated in East Africa the power distance between the management at top and lower levels are more .So the top management should have to be aware of what they have to do for the successful implementation, because most of the tools of Lean are used in the shop floor.
Secondly the biggest confront expected is the resistance when changing the organizational culture, human nature of resistance to change, may be due to beliefs, values of organization or may be of feeling insecurity.
Resistance from the aging, high seniority staffs and middle management is another challenge, due the fear of losing the power, esteem and comforts(Sim and Rogers,2009)
Moreover it is not easy to implement the downstream co-ordination in the supply chain, mainly the suppliers, due to the frequent service to the factory than the previous.
CONCLUSION
In this highly volatile environment of business, every business enterprises are striving hard to perform better than their competitors to stay in the market ,for this they have to maintain a competitive advantage by giving more customer value to the customers .From the literature reviews it is clear that becoming lean is the most suitable situation to achieve this objectives ,that is reduced the non value parts of the organization and striving hard to continuously improve their operation in all the parts of the supply chain. As shown by the Toyota motors of Japan. If Musoma fish processors can maintain a success full fruit of lean in their long run they can touch the chilled fish market in East Africa.
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