Automation and lean

First of all, automation is not the term of lean "autonomation". The automation here is talking about the utilization of automatic machine or production equipment to produce without or less manpower.

Last year, I had a visiting for 6 companies in Japan focus on lean manufacturing. It included 2 famous automotive companies (Toyota and Nissan). I found they are fully utilized the automation for production. During the travel, there was much information came from the guide about the culture of Japan. Consolidated the information, I came up some ideas for automation utilization to share with you.

In Japan, I am so surprised that the average age of citizen is 48. She already was a aged country by low born rate. In order to maintain her competition force, avoid the labor shortage, automation utilization is a good solution. From lean concept, reduce the waste of manpower, or we say to use manpower to create higher value. It is totally no conflict between automation and lean manufacturing. In some situation, it is a good solution to combine the lean concept with automation. Below, I stated some condition for using automation,

1. The working environment is unhealthy for human in long term, such as the job of painting. We can consider to make it in automation.
2. The working environment is dangerous for human in short term, such as the job of welding. We can consider to make it in automation.
3. The process is in heavy loading, it exceed the strength of human for long term. Such as the moving the heavy semi-product repeatedly. We can consider to make it in automation.
4. The process is very fine and accurate, the visual of human can not complete the job. We also need the automation there to complete or support.
5. The job is no any technique needed. Only a repeatedly and simple job. Such as the material handling between two processes or some material feeding activities.

According to above conditions, actually, what should do for human in production? I made it in a simply sentence to describe, the job for human, should has a certain of technique but can not too complicated or too simple. It also can not be operated in the environment where is not heathly. However, why we still need human for production? Why not fully automation? To answer this question, we must consider the cost of operation. Please remember, human working is much flexible than machine.

Refer to the graph above, the portion "X" of automation cost meant it is fixed cost of automation no matter what is the quantity we produced. The line of manual production cost is going up proportional to the quantity they produced sharply, when the line meet with the automation cost line, it meant both method of production meet the balance and we can consider to use automation instead of manpower. For this point, out of maintenance cost and salary, we should also consider the cost of line change and lost of labor shortage.

Finally, there is no conflict between automation and lean manufacturing, actually, they are supporting each other to improve the production. Please have a good consideration when you get into the situation for changing the manufacturing mode.