Customer Reviews

Making Materials Flow: A Lean Material-Handling Guide for Operations, Production-Control, and Engineering Professionals

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Ask the operators in most companies, "Do you ever run out of materials?", and the answer is "All the time." But if you ask this same question to a company that implements the 1-hour delivery system described in MAKING MATERIALS FLOW, the answer is "Never!" This workbook is an excellent resource for setting up a PFEP (Plan For Every Part), creating a parts supermarket, and establishing a delivery system. When I was a Lean Manager in Corning, I first used this material delivery system with manufacturing cells that assembled telephone network interface devices (that plastic box mounted on the side of your house where your phone line enters). By eliminating material shortages that frequently plagued these lines (stopping hundreds of employees' work), we saved over $500,000 annually.

I was also fortunate to attend Rick Harris' workshop for MAKING MATERIALS FLOW; this is one of my favorite Lean books, and one of my most enjoyable tools of the trade; if you want to end the stagnation between your production processes, I highly recommend reading this book (along with CREATING CONTINUOUS FLOW -- Mike Rother and Rick Harris) and putting the concepts into practice. The Lean Enterprise Institute's workbooks are top-notch, and they have definitely helped me become a Lean expert.

Sam Frazier
Director of Continuous Improvement
LBC-Sensei

While this book does a good job of defining how to improve efficiency and delivery performance through improvements in material transfer in an assembly area, it completely ignores plants that must juggle fabrication along with assembly....which is a substantial number of U.S. Plants. Understand that this book is premised on the Toyota Production System, and automotive plants generally assemble purchased components into a final assembled product. Things like engine assembly area often done elsewhere. Fab and assembly in the same building poses a different set of problems and opportunities.