Lean helps all parts of your organization come together as an organized machine.
History of Lean Manufacturing
“Lean Manufacturing” as a term has only been around for a little over 30 years. The term was originally coined by John Krafcik (now CEO of Waymo and former CEO of Hyundai Motor America) in his MIT master’s thesis entitled “Triumph of the Lean Production System.”
Definition: Lean Manufacturing
a practice or process that seeks to minimize waste while maximizing value to the customer or client.
While Krafcik may have created the term, lean manufacturing has been around for significantly longer. It can be traced back to the work of Eli Whitney, who was the first to successfully manufacture a product with interchangeable parts, and to time and motion studies by engineers like Frederick Taylor and Frank and Lillian Gilbreth applied to industrial workers of the early 20th century. Additionally, Henry Ford’s assembly line was also a leap forward in lean manufacturing.
A natural disaster or pandemic doesn’t have to mean disaster for your manufacturing facility. Be prepared.
We may remember the last few years as the time of unending disasters. Historic spring flooding, wildfires, hurricanes, and other storms were so widespread across the USA in 2019 one-third of the country qualified for federal disaster relief. In Australia, nearly 30 million acres burned during their 2019 wildfire season. Then the pandemic began. With it came civil unrest, supply chain nightmares(remember all those ships stuck in the Suez Canal) and yet another round of natural disasters.
A manufacturing disaster recovery plan lets everyone know what to do when disaster strikes.
It should be a wake-up call for everyone. Natural and other disasters can strike any part of the world. The probability of something unexpected impacting your manufacturing plant is high, and shouldn’t be ignored.
Here are some key steps in minimizing the risks associated with an unforeseen disruption.
Have an established action plan for your personnel.
If a disaster occurs, your managers and team members should know exactly where to go, what to do, and what they are responsible for. Outline responsibilities in advance. This will help each person or team understand how their role will help in maintaining safety or in returning operations back to normal. Your manufacturing disaster recovery plan should include the following:
GE has a long history of providing industrial control systems for gas and steam turbines.
Speedtronic turbine control from General Electric is one of the world’s most reliable turbine control systems. Find out more below.
Cross-section of a GE industrial gas turbine
A History of Turbine Science
Gas turbine theory is not new to the world; in fact, Leonardo Da Vinci designed a reaction-type turbine. While nothing like the turbines of today, Da Vinci’s chimney jack’ used hot air rising from a hearth to turn an axial rotor attached to a roasting spit located over the fire. In this way, food on the spit turned without need for an attendant, harnessing the power of burning gases.
Early History
GE was one of the first modern companies to understand the power of turbine applications. High-profile projects like Niagara Falls (1918) and the Grand Coulee Dam project (1942) used GE turbines. The first gas turbine used to generate electric power in the US came from General Electric. It was a 3.5-MW unit installed at Belle Isle Station, Oklahoma City, OK, in 1949.
Expansion of Products
GE’s gas turbine division is now over a century old. It has advanced gas turbine jet engine design along with commercializing industrial gas turbines for the first time. GE turbines are also used for power generation. You can find them in nuclear power plants, combined-cycle gas turbine plants, and in steam turbine systems and boiler systems.
Download a high quality pdf of these characteristics.
Beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the early 2000s, GE developed and sold sophisticated turbine control systems for their gas and steam turbines. These systems sold under the SPEEDTRONIC trademark name. Speedtronic systems started with the Mark I series, continuing through the release of the Mark VIe.
While each system had significant improvements, many Mark I and Mark II control systems are still in active use around the world today. The longevity of these systems is attibutable to GE’s adherence to specific gas and steam turbine control philosophies. These emphasize “safety of operation, reliability, flexibility, maintainability, and ease of use, in that order,” according to company documents. The gas philosophy maintains:
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