The Tool that Lean Needed

Its name is i-LEAN. A whole declaration of intentions in the name itself... and it is designed to be assembled with the ERPs, complement them and give them 3 fundamental systems for a Lean Manufacturing implementation..

1.-An factory activity monitor that reports us in real time what is happening in the factory with Materials, Staff or Machinery... just as if it was a sort of a “digital nervous system for the factory” that connects it to your control staff continuously.

2.-A production data collector that gets all the information available in the factory and sends it automatically to the ERP.

3.-A platform of touchscreen Lean assistants designed to guide your operators to proceed in the most efficient way in each situation. And that with simple assistants that your personnel can follow easily, allows you to implement Lean Manufacturing Methodologies to rise productivity in the factory to levels that are impossible for old systems based on paper.

And that is in my opinion the great advance of iLEAN...
And is that it connects you with your factory so that you know instantly of any incidence that may arise and allows you to react faster and thus applying LEAN methodology through the touchscreen work assistants available for your operators.

That is the key and that is the reason why it can help you raising the productivity in a factory up to levels previously unthinkable.

Among this kind of assistants iLEAN has got, for each process and work position in the factory... for me, as a Lean Manufacturing implementer that already made implementations before the existence of iLEAN, there are 3 that look to me as especially brilliant due to the brutal change that imply in relation to how much cost before starting up this same LEAN methodology in a factory.

1.-In the first one you can watch implemented Kaban, fifo, JIT, Poka Yoke and 5S in a single operation that only implies the operator 5 clicks in the touchscreen.

This one you see is an iLEAN home screen configuration, there are many, but all of them keep this same sense of simplicity. In the end... they are tools that must be used by an operator.

Well ... I click in jobs, I log in and select the plant I am assigned to. In this panel I see a Kanban ball for each job taking place in the center, with the advance situation in which any of them remain. Just in the block below there is a Poka Yoke ball (error proof) with each component required to complete the process, and there I provide the quantity needed without having the chance of failing which component to use on my own. I click on it and launch a FIFO assistant that tells me which is the product batch to choose. After selecting it a 5s assistant (always present in iLEAN to tell you where is and where must be each thing) shows me the place where this product batch I must use is located. I validate and a just in time assistant tells me how much quantity of this product must I take to complete the job and how much quantity has been already extracted, which converts the complex problem of implementing JIT really in a child's play.

2.-The second assistant I want to show you controls in real time … OEE - KPI and any variables you need to implement Six Sigma or Kaizen in the company.

Here in each component ball you can for example watch the consumption sistuation each one has. Red color indicates an overconsumption. There are also greens, oranges and an exact report of each quantity at each time. The same happens also with time reports, showing any deviation in the planning or even the same operators can record here any work events … with the section, the event type and the time interval in which this has happened and even a text explanation of the same… actually making any anomalous situation become a system alarm …

making that finally iLEAN behaves as a “king of digital nervous system for the plant” that alerts you in real time of any problem and allow you to react to production errors in a manner that never before was possible.

3.-And the third one I want to show you… represent one of the more demolishing concepts of iLEAN... and is the fact that information, recorded in paper in the old systems, now appear directly in your desktop as a simple aftermath of the use of iLEAN assistants by your operators. That feed effortlessly… for example…

a traceability scanner like this… that can tell us how has been produced each product batch in the factory, with the supplier details and even the exact date and delivery note in which arrived to the plant each component … as you see here .. showing you all the traceback, trace process or trace forward reports…

clicking here …
and bringing you then the most exhaustive traceability that one could obtain... actually at 0 cost and in a far easier manner.

And that is that… as you see… our goal is only make easier the Lean Manufacturing implementation. That is in the end the meaning of our name i-LEAN and that is the illusion we work for every day in this business.

In this line, if you think that perhaps we can be useful for you in some of your projects fill in the form at the right and we will be pleased to help you with your needs.