The term “Lean manufacturing” is synonymous with efficient production. In practice, inefficiency or waste is anything that doesn’t add value to the customer but requires an investment of time, money and talent. Idle time, underutilized talent, excess inventory, and inefficient processes are all considered waste by the Lean definition. This project empowers the British automotive manufacturing industry to create a learning culture among employees at the frontline of their operations, focusing on lean principles.
The primary focus will be the development of a functional prototype which is a user-friendly and engaging application to help novice users learn basic lean principles of waste reduction in a simulated production environment. This will allow the development team to test/demonstrate the power of the approach, understand the learners’ requirements further to scale up the Application in the future.
The transformation in learning provision will allow vital industry skills to be offered to employees who have been unable to access relevant vocational training. Through this pilot project, Draexlmaier plan to be the first to demonstrate the power of digital vocational learning in Lean to the manufacturing industry to overcome training inequality. The skills training will be delivered in a manufacturing simulation app so learners naturally develop at a time and pace which suits them.