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From cars to pills: what are we going to make lean next?
Topic Started: May 28 2011, 11:46 PM (140 Views)
Alessandro_Turco2012

Hi all,

This is a part of the Prius assembly line:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj8wCxUdASQ&feature=related

And this is a part of the Boeing 737 one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihtl-SZLU9o&feature=player_embedded

For a second take out of the equation the speed of the line (the Boeing video is accelerated) and the size of the products manufactured, you will notice that the two videos are not so different from each other… reference lines on the floor, standardized routes of the trolleys, poka-yoke here and there: the more you look at the videos the more similarities you'll find.

The production of passengers and commercial airplanes is a good example of how the lean manufacturing principles, which were born in the automotive field, have spread to other types of product within the transportation industry.

Until here there is nothing that really surprises me.

In recent years, however, more interesting things are happening. One of my former managers at Toyota, a lean manufacturing expert, has recently moved to a market leader in the pharmaceutical industry. That change really surprised me: I am not familiar with the pharma sector and therefore I couldn’t fully understand what a pharmaceutical company could get out of somebody with an automotive background.
Things became clearer when I came across these articles on the current challenges faced by that industry:

http://www.bcg.com/documents/file39749.pdf

http://www.fwc.com/publications/tech_papers/files/IChemE%20WCCE7%20Lean%20Thinking%20In%20Pharma%20Industry.pdf

So it looks like lean in pharma is (now becoming) a reality and there is already a real market for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IZjF-Pb49Q&feature=related

Now the question we are left with is... “what industry will be next”? Any thoughts on that?


Alessandro
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