Beyond Lean: Simulation in Practice

Authors

Charles R. Standridge Ph.D., Grand Valley State UniversityFollow

Files

Description

Lean thinking, as well as associated processes and tools, have involved into a ubiquitous perspective for improving systems particularly in the manufacturing arena. With application experience has come an understanding of the boundaries of lean capabilities and the benefits of getting beyond these boundaries to further improve performance. Discrete event simulation is recognized as one beyond-the-boundaries of lean technique. Thus, the fundamental goal of this text is to show how discrete event simulation can be used in addition to lean thinking to achieve greater benefits in system improvement than with lean alone. Realizing this goal requires learning the problems that simulation solves as well as the methods required to solve them. The problems that simulation solves are captured in a collection of case studies. These studies serve as metaphors for industrial problems that are commonly addressed using lean and simulation.

Publication Date

12-2011

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Keywords

Lean, discrete-event simulation, beyond lean, simulation case studies, simulation text book

Disciplines

Engineering

Comments

All simulation models referred to in the text have been implemented in the Automod Simulation Environment. See http://www.appliedmaterials.com/services-software/automation-software/automod-academic-program to acquire Automod.

Answers to selected problems in the text, including Automod models, are available by contacting the author at standric@gvsu.edu. In addition, feedback is always welcome.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.