Lean manufacturing is a business system that contributes to the growth of production efficiency and the company profit, by identifying and eliminating waste. TPM is one of the techniques used to eliminate production waste, being focused on the maintenance of production equipment, so as to increase their operation and efficiency, while ensuring the quality of production due to preventing the causes that lead to waste. In the present paper for the continuous improvement of the manufacturing process within the work cells equipped with CNC processing centers, TPM is implemented, which contributes to the optimization of predictive, preventive and corrective maintenance activities of production equipment, thus improving the efficiency of machine tools. TPM ensures maximum equipment efficiency due to the elimination of unforeseen equipment downtime, respectively increasing the speed and availability of the machine. The research is based on a case study from automotive industry. Monitoring the daily activities of the equipment is done through the TPM component, namely Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) which presents the situation in the manufacturing process. The waste related to technological equipment were identified, such as: incorrect operation of the work equipment, unplanned shutdowns, respectively damages that occurred in the manufacturing process.

Growing competitiveness of manufacturing companies has led companies board to look for new innovative solutions to increase the productive efficiency. More and more companies are looking to maximize profit through different ways, some of them use classical methods that are focused on increasing production capacity, expanding the product portfolio, manufacturing and marketing campaigns, other operational activities, are implementing modern techniques to reduce losses. This paper propose to present the way that productivity is increased by reducing lead time through Lean Manufacturing method implementation. For this purpose a piece will be manufactured using a CNC processing center, which will contribute significantly to processing the part at a higher precision, and at the same time eliminating the down times. To highlight the contribution and the efficiency of the CNC processing center, will be present the classic production method using a classical milling machine, respectively FUS 22, the method that was also implemented, according to this case study. To analyze and graphically illustrate these two production methods, respectively classic and modern methods, VSM will be built, then the 2 methods will be compared.

In the context of increasing competitiveness, the companies from manufacturing industry are constrained to provide quality products at a lower price and a shorter delivery time. This brings new challenges during the manufacturing process. One of the main challenges is to reduce or eliminate waste during the production stage. The actual paper presents methods and solutions through which the waste from the manufacturing process is identified and eliminated. As a consequence, increased productive efficiency and higher profit have been gained. The objective of this study is to implement Lean manufacturing tools, in order to improve the production process carried out within a manufacturing company, with a small manufacturing batch. Based on real data from the manufacturing process, the current value stream mapping (VSM) was built, identifying both operational and non-operational times. After waste identification, an optimal solution was chosen for the manufactured parts required by the customer. Implementing the best solution resulted in a productive efficiency increase by 90.93%, which significantly reduces the manufacturing time.

Nowadays, manufacturing companies are involved in a big competition, each of them looking to increase productivity and profit by implementing best practices within the company. The present paper presents an analysis of best practices of manufacturing companies which contributes to increasing and improving the productivity, and also have been identified new trends regarding best practices implemented in manufacturing companies. In order to accomplish this research, has been analyzed a successful manufacturing company in the field of manufacturing and automation from Romania. To collect data for this study there were accessed two databases, different specialized websites in the field, but the most important source of information was obtained from the analyzed company. One of the best practices identified in this study was to improve the productivity through re-engineering, practice that the company studied has implemented. In order to highlight this good practice, namely reengineering, were analyzed in parallel both of existing manufacturing types from the analyzed company, respectively production on CNC processing centers and classical production. The exemplification of both types of productions was done by using a Lean Manufacturing method, namely Value Stream Mapping, identifying the operational flow of both types of production.