The Process Model for Shop Floor Management Implementation

During the early 1990s, the Toyota Production System (TPS) became widely accepted across the industrialized world. Companies from different industries gained in experience by applying lean principles as well as by developing and refining customized approaches to optimize products and processes. From a practical standpoint, the implementation of TPS-elements such as one-piece-flow, visual standards or U-shaped layouts, can easily be identified on the shop floor. Meanwhile, most of the underlying management processes and structures remain hidden to the outside observer. Closing this major gap is the objective of shop floor management. It provides and formalizes an integrated framework of processes with defined roles, responsibilities and competencies to sustain and improve efficiency. Its fundamental principles include a focus on prevention, frequent high decision making and empowered teams consisting of experts, managers and operators. The objective of this article is to define the scope of shop floor management, to sketch a generic structure in terms of an overall process reference model as well as to detail new and modified sub processes, roles and responsibilities to enhance its implementation.