pmicoc.org

Dr. Mustafa Shraim  

Mustafa Shraim is the president and principal consultant of SQPS, Ltd., a quality improvement consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio (www.shraimqps.com). He holds a Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering from West Virginia University. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Dr Shraim is a certified quality engineer (CQE) and six sigma black belt (CSSBB), both by ASQ. He also has a Lead Auditor certification by The International Register of Certificated Auditors (IRCA). He has many publications the area of quality management as well as integrating statistical quality tools with fuzzy set principles. His main interests are in the areas of Lean / Six Sigma consulting and training as well as quality management systems. He has helped many companies in the design and deployments of such initiatives.

Lean Thinking

Lean systems emphasize the prevention of waste. The question is: What is waste? A brief and direct answer would be “any activities that absorb resources but provide no value”. To expand on this, basic forms of waste and their impact on the business will be reviewed. This review will include examples that will sound familiar to many.

Traditional for-profit organizations determine what the cost of the product or service first then decide on the selling price. Lean enterprises think differently and are able to capitalize on their profit margin to separate themselves further from the competition

In this presentation, it will also be shown how to utilize lean thinking and tools to drastically improve the performance of businesses regardless of the sector to which they belong. One of the most common is value stream mapping (VSM). This powerful method takes both knowledge and determination to implement. A simple example will be given to explain this method.