THE VALUE OF INQUIRY IN TEACHING LEAN PROCESS DESIGN

摘要

Lean principles provide systematic guidelines for designing effective processes, focusing on eliminating waste by specifying value, simplifying flow, and pulling from customer demand. Lean ideas have transformed process design and significantly improved lead times, quality and cost for many manufacturing companies. While lean principles are simply stated, the design process is complicated because every process has unique constraints and competitive drivers. In this paper, we examine the issue of how to use hands-on materials to teach lean design, and in particular, the value of inquiry and the use of multiple methods within the same course. We examine these issues in the context a physical process simulation, and discuss the use of case studies and a short game about variability to explore how different approaches to teaching lean topics build depth of understanding. We present preliminary results of the effects on student learning across implementations at five universities.