With examples drawn from aerospace, electronics, household appliance, personal products, and automotive industries, Lean Assembly covers the engineering of assembly operations through:
- Characterizing the demand in terms of volume by product and product family, component consumption, seasonal variability and life cycle.
- Matching the physical structure of the shop floor to the demand with the goal of approaching takt-driven production as closely as possible.
- Working out the details of assembly tasks station by station, including station sizing, tooling, fixturing, operator instructions, part presentation, conveyance between stations, and the geometry of assembly lines as a whole.
- Incorporating mistake-proofing, successive inspection, and test operations for quality assurance.
Lean Assembly differs from most other books on lean manufacturing in that it focuses on technical content as a driver for implementation methods. The emphasis is on exactly what should be done. This book should be the "dog-eared" and "penciled-in" resource on every assembly engineer's desk.