Cokes Lean Production - Essay Example

November 29, Coke’s Lean Production Introduction Lean production prioritizes waste and the expense reduction. The research delves on the importance of the lean production process. The same research focuses on Coke’s implementation of the advantageous lean production strategy. Coke’s lean production process increases revenues, reduces avoidable production and distribution waste and other related expenses. Lean Production Lean production can be defined in several ways. One of the more popular definitions of lean production indicates the application of strategies to significantly reduce and get rid of avoidable production wastes (Harris, 2013). The waste reduction strategies do not reduce current production’s quality level. Initially, the lean production strategy was crafted to cater to the production line of one of Japan’s top selling car models, Toyota. Toyota’s lean production cropped up after World War II. Japan was just recovering from the war loss. Lean production is a continually innovative process. Daily, the production line and staff personnel as well as production management team continue to find ways to reduce production wastes. Lean production reduces the avoidable costs, expenses, and costs associated with typical production processes. The typical production process includes employees accidentally generating avoidable wastes, expenses, and costs to delay the production process and delaying (reducing) revenue generation. Further, the lean production strategy can cover all the business entities’ activities. The activities may include the design of the product as well as the production process. The activities include the production of the company’s saleable or finished products. The activities include the marketing department’s product delivery and selling processes (Jones, 2013). Coke Coke implements several lean production strategies. The strategy significantly reduces production expenses. Initially, coke marketed its quality coke products as having the same taste around the world. To do this, coke used only one water source. The singular source came from only one place. The company exported the coke products to different countries around the world. However, the cost of shipping the coke products increased as the distance between the original home production facilities to the country of destination (Marcotte et al., 2012). Consequently, the higher shipping and production costs of products sold in very far away countries generated a lower net profit than coke products sold in places nearer the production facilities. As the distance between Coke’s home production facilities and the destination country, the production costs, expenses, and waste similarly increase (Marcotte et al., 2012). To reduce production and shipping expenses, the Coke management decided to set up production facilities in the foreign countries (Marcotte et al., 2012). Coke products sold in one country must be produced in that same country. Coke products lean produced in Japan are sold in Japan. Likewise, coke products lean manufactured in China are sold in China. As expected, the taste of coke products may differ from one country or location to another. This is an expected favorable side effect of lean production. New York customers may prefer New York water source taste. Coke’s China coke production plants use local China water. Similarly, Coke’s U.K. coke production facilities use the local U.K. water source. Coke’s New York production plant uses the local state’s water source. As expected, the taste of China’s water source may differ from the taste of the New York water source (Marcotte et al., 2012). Adapting the coke tastes to the local customers increases overall demand for the Coke products, increasing global revenues, increasing its competitiveness over Pepsi and other rival products. Further, the Coke Company is willing to sacrifice the coke product’s change from one universal taste to the more favorable taste differences in exchange for reducing avoidable production costs and wastes. As expected, the China target market is used to the local China water source taste. The local China residents may not be used to or prefer Coke products that use Japan water source. Similarly, the average Japan resident will prefer the taste of the local Japanese community water source than the taste of imported French water (Marcotte et al., 2012). Furthermore, the Coke production facilities implement a typical lean production strategy. The strategy involves volume production. Empty Coke bottles are rolled through a conveyor belt through several processes. Producing coke volume lowers production costs. At the fixed hourly salary rate of each Coke production facility employee, an increase in the number of bottles produced in one hour will reduce the salary expense allocated to each bottle of filled up coke bottle. Similarly, the other productions costs will decline on a per bottle basis as the number of bottles are produced in one hour. For example, the storage cost of each bottle stored in the production facilities’ warehouses is reduced as the number of bottled stored are increased. (Matejka, 2005). Moreover, the use of the conveyor belts in the Coke lean production activities reduces avoidable wastes and expenses. The conveyor belts reduce the production employees’ personally carrying the empty and filled coke bottles from one part of the coke production facility plant to another section or processing department to complete the entire coke manufacturing process. By replacing the process of coke employees personally carrying the bottles within the production plant with conveyor belts, the possibility of employees accidentally breaking the bottles (bottles falling on the production plant ground and breaking) is removed. Likewise, the shift from manual carrying of bottles to the use of conveyor belts reduces the possibility of some bottles being misplaced. When the bottles are misplaced, the employees are required to search for the misplaced coke bottles. Time is wasted searching for the lost or misplaced bottles (Matejka, 2005). Further, the use of automated coke filling conveyor machines reduced coke cap waste. The Coke production conveyor machines automatically place the caps on the filled up coke bottles. The machines reduce the use of employees’ personally placing the caps on the coke bottles. There is a greater possibility that the coke employees may unintentionally commit mistakes in the fitting of the coke caps onto the filled up coke bottles. The tired, absent-minded, and lackluster coke production plant employees may not perfectly fit a cap on the coke bottles. When this happens, the coke production facility’s quality control employee may reject the coke bottle. The quality control employee may request the erring concerned erring coke production employee to replace the wrongly fitted cap with a new cap. Consequently, the cost of another unacceptable coke cap is added to the day’s waste costs (Matejka, 2005). In addition, the Coke production facilities’ globally established lean production strategy includes the automatic filling of each coke bottle with the coke liquid content. The conveyor belts bring the empty coke bottles through a faucet. The faucet fills the bottles with the coke liquid content. Consequently, the company removes the employees from the task of manually filling each empty coke bottle with the liquid coke content. By automatically filling up the coke bottles, coke liquid waste is significantly reduced. There is a possibility that the coke production employees may spill the coke liquid content onto the production plant table while filling up the coke bottles. On the other hand, the machines are engineered to precisely stop filling the empty coke bottles when a certain milliliter quantity of coke liquid content is reached. Thus, coke liquid waste is 100 percent eliminated (Matejka, 2005). Further, the Coke lean production facility uses the conveyor belts to segregate the bottles for shipment. The conveyor belts deliver the filled up coke bottles to a prescribed production facility location. The conveyor belts reduced the use of production employees’ having to segregate the bottles for shipment. There is a higher possibility that the coke production employees may accidentally breaks some of the coke bottles during the human handling process. On the other hand, the machines are engineered to automatically place the filled up coke bottles in the place where the coke cartons are waiting. The filled up coke bottles are then packed inside the carton and sent to coke stores. The lean production machines remove the possibility of coke bottles falling onto the coke production facility floor and breaking into several pieces (Matejka, 2005). Furthermore, the Coke lean production facilities use engineered fine mesh conveyor belts to literally reduce production process wastes (Klemes, 2008). The Coke plants’ conveyor belts contain catch baskets and trays. The catch baskets and trays prevent the coke bottles from spinning out of control and accidentally dropping onto the Coke production plant’s floor, disintegrating into injury-causing bits of glass fragments. Likewise, the Coke production conveyor belts do not mix the production plants’ waste water from the clean water. The catch baskets and trays catch and segregate the waste water, ensuring they do not mix with the nearby coke production plants’ clean water. The coke employees oversee the entire process. Moreover, the lean production employees ensure that the machines do not mix the waste water with the clean water source (Klemes, 2008). Specifically, Coca Cola Australia allocates 2.5 percent of its total water supply for the automatic cleaning of the Coke lean production plants’ conveyor belts. Most of the clean water source is used as part of the ingredients that enter the empty coke bottles. The production facilities’ use of a synthetic lube processing saves the Australian Coke branch estimated 71 ml of clean water source during a one year period. The installing of the costly lube parts will translate to higher water waste savings, increasing the Australian lean production facilities’ overall net profits. The use of the costly lube belts reduces issues of microbes causing health issues on the Coke product customers. Conclusion Based on the above discussion, the lean production focuses on reducing avoidable wastes and the relevant expenses. Lean production uses machines to help reduce production process wastes and expenses. Coke uses conveyor belts and lubes to reduce production wastes and expenses. Coke’s using local water sources increases customers’ coke product wants, increasing its competitiveness. Evidently, Coke’s lean production process significantly increases revenues, decreases avoidable wastes and the related expenses within the production and distribution areas to increase overall net profits. References: Harris, C. (2013). Capitalizing on Lean Production Systems to Win New Business. New York: CRC Press. Jones, D. (2013). Lean Thinking. New York: Simon and Schuster. Klemes, J. (2008). Handbook of Water and Energy Management in Food Processing. New York: Elsevier Press. Marcotte et al. (2012). Sustainable Reverse Logistics Network. New York: J. Wiley & Sons. Matejka, K. (2005). Making Change Happen on Time, On Target, On Budget. Lanham: Davies- Black Press. Read More