5S and Lean Manufacturing

Time is money. That statement is especially true when it comes to manufacturing.

Building an efficient, high quality production process is critical to maintain profitability in a manufacturing operation. Thankfully, we can learn from decades of research done by industrial engineers and operations researchers to understand the tools we can use to analyze our production systems.

This course is for anyone who wants to learn to make an operation more efficient. We’ll learn about the history of the lean manufacturing discipline and dive into the concepts developed by the Toyota Production System. We’ll learn how to identify waste in a production system using the TIMWOOD acronym, and we’ll also analyze the efficiency of an operation using 5S principles. Finally, we’ll understand Kanban inventory management systems and review specific tools that can increase efficiency and quality.

You can learn all the terminology used in this class via a google search or by picking up a Lean Manufacturing textbook. The objective of this class is to teach you how to apply those principles to situations you might encounter in your daily world. The skill students should walk out of this class with is critical thinking, and a passion for recognizing waste and inefficiency in the world around them.