Lean Reliability Improves Plant Profitability

The University of Tennessee’s Center for Executive Education, well-known as an educational leader in operational excellence, has partnered with Life Cycle Engineering to launch Establishing Reliability Excellence for Lean Implementation (Lean Reliability), a new program that links the optimization of manufacturing assets and processes to manufacturing plant efficiency.

"A manufacturing facility attempting to become 'lean' without having reliable equipment can produce disastrous consequences," said Chuck Parke, Lean Reliability faculty lead. "The two concepts must go hand-in-hand to maximize impact and results.”

Manufacturing operations across many industries have experienced dramatic results when they correlated equipment reliability with lean, creating a culture of prevention and improvement while optimizing safety, productivity, and profitability. Examples in which the University of Tennessee and/or LifeCycle Engineering have played a role:

• A heating and cooling corporation improved assembly time from five weeks to four hours in less than nine months.
• A film production company reduced equipment-related downtime 40 percent in 18 months.
• A sugar refinery reduced maintenance costs more than 25 percent in two years.
• An aluminum manufacturer reduced plant maintenance spending 20 percent while increasing raw material capacity 10 percent in three years.
• An airline maintenance operation increased due-date delivery to 100 percent from 25 percent in one year; it reduced product flow time 60 percent and increased revenue $40 million over five years.

Lean Reliability is designed for plant managers, maintenance managers, business unit managers, operation managers, directors of operations, and vice presidents of operations who want to improve production flow, eliminate waste from the value stream, improve customer lead times, reduce inventory, and improve quality and efficiencies.

Reasons for implementing Lean Reliability include optimizing manufacturing assets and processes, minimizing production costs, improving product quality, and improving safety.

Parke and the program's other faculty members have a combined 70 years of real-world experience in applying lean methodologies and reliability processes in a variety of industries worldwide. As former plant leaders themselves, these faculty members have delivered consistent and significant performance improvements in facility productivity, quality, safety, cost effectiveness, profitability, and employee engagement.

Lean Reliability will be offered November 15-20, 2009.  Program cost of $4,500 includes tuition, books and materials, lodging, and meals. For more information or to register, please call 865-974-5001 or visit http://LeanReliability.utk.edu.

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