Essay On Engineering, Technology And Society

For this paper, the two tools selected for analysis are kaizen and lean manufacturing. This two process improvement tools will be examined in order to determine whether they can find use in addressing economic, environmental, and social responsibility issues that face automotive industries.
According to Stewart (2012), the Kaizen methodology of process improvement is a philosophy that is greatly hinged on continuous development. Its roots can be traced back to Japan after World War II (Stewart, 2012). The method relies heavily on small continuous changes introduced to a process aimed at improving it. This implies that it encourages organizations, production lines and companies to regularly evaluate their process and add frequent changes aimed at increasing efficiency and productivity. This tool can be applied in the automotive industry. The reason for this observation is that in any automotive factory processes can be improved using the Kaizen philosophy. Factories can be able to set specific design and production standards that they constantly improve.
Lean manufacturing is similar to the Kaizen tool discussed above. It mainly relies on improving customer value and value productivity by decreasing costs (Dennis, 2007). Cost reduction is achieved by eliminating wastes within the production line. This in turn increases the efficiency of the entire production process. This tool can also find use in the automotive industry. Manufactures can use the principle to eliminate any waste within an assembly line. Furthermore, a vehicle is made up of numerous components sourced from different manufacturers who form a large global supply chain. Therefore, lean production can be used to increase the efficiency of this supply chain. This can be achieved by introducing lean principles aimed at reducing supply chain costs and in turn reducing the overall vehicle production cost. This would have a ripple effect since customers would get more value (Dennis, 2007).

Works Cited

Stewart, John. The Toyota Kaizen Continuum: A Practical Guide to Implementing Lean. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2012. Print.
Dennis, Pascal. Lean Production Simplified: A Plain Language Guide to the World's Most Powerful Production System. New York: Productivity Press, 2007. Print.