Lean Principles Application in the Automotive Industry (original) (raw)

Acta Polytechnica Hungarica

In today's competitive environment, the strategic goal of most organizations, is not only to survive, but also to move forward. It is therefore important to examine business processes and minimize waste. Anything that does not add value and contributes to unnecessarily spent funds can be considered to be a waste, so the goal of each community should be to get rid of activities that negatively affect its effective functioning. The aim of the paper is to highlight the possibilities of using Lean principles in the automotive industry. The purpose of using lean manufacturing methods is to eliminate identified shortcomings and wastage, to ensure smoother production and to meet customer requirements, and to reduce business costs and increase its competitiveness on the market. The article describes selected industrial engineering methods that deal with waste elimination (time, transport, waiting, movement, inventory), followed by an example of a specific application of Value Stream Mapping (Yamazummi chart) in automotive companies in Slovakia. This example gives space for discussion on the next direction of Lean principles usage in practice and potential benefits for the future.