Making production processes more efficient – digital guidance through the smart factory
How can production processes be designed more efficiently, bottlenecks identified and waste avoided in the long term? Under this headline, the Web-Erfa “Lean in Practice” together with the ITA Academy/Digital Innovation Center Europe (a spin-off of RWTH Aachen University) offered a practical insight into the advantages of lean methods.
As part of a digital tour of the ITA Smart Factory, participants in the online event were given concrete application examples and real problems from industrial practice. They experienced how lean approaches bring about directly measurable improvements in processes – from higher productivity and lower costs to a culture of continuous improvement.
Based on the original lean definition of “meeting explicit and implicit customer needs with the least amount of resources by continuously eliminating waste, variability and inflexibility”, ITA speakers Massoud Sattari and Andrés Rueda showed ways to achieve lean transformation.
Remove everything that does not contribute to value creation – Identify and eliminate waste at every stage – Faster production times and lower inventories – Utilize resources and minimize inventories – A perfect, waste-free system.
The virtual exchange of experiences came to a successful conclusion in the final discussion, where participants reported on their lean experiences or had questions about specific aspects. There was a consensus among the participants and organizers that further and more in-depth events should be dedicated to the topic of lean management and lean production.
Organizer
The event was organized by ProduktionNRW. ProduktionNRW is the cluster for mechanical engineering and production technology in North Rhine-Westphalia and is organized by VDMA NRW. ProduktionNRW sees itself as a platform for networking, informing and marketing companies, institutions and networks with each other and along the value chain. Significant parts of the services provided by ProduktionNRW are funded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.