OREANDA-NEWS. March 19, 2009. The economic crisis doesn’t impede the further development of the KAMAZ Production System.

Many participants of the international conference “Lean Production Instruments: Effective Production System Organization at Enterprises” spoke about it in their reports.

The KAMAZ Production System which has been developing at the enterprise since 2006 is based on the Lean Production principles and on the best model of this kind in the world – Total Toyota Production System (T-TPS).

Vladimir Arzhentsov, Deputy Chairman of KAMAZ Production System Development Committee, announced some results of KAMAZ Production System development at the conference. In 2008 one of the main performances describing the personnel’s involvement in the Lean Production processes jumped. 48 thousand kaizen-suggestions aimed at improvement of all activities were received. On the average almost every worker made at least one suggestion. One suggestion was made by every 20th employee in 2006 and every 5th worker in 2007.

For three years due to the made suggestions 2700 projects were opened, 1300 units of equipment and 90 thousand square meters of production areas were released. About 300 instructors who had been trained to develop the Lean Production principles and KAMAZ Production System during these years started to train the personnel of production units, the managerial staff and other workers.

Due to the KAMAZ Production System development a saving rate made up 1.6 billion roubles for three years with losses of 16 million roubles. Labour productivity increased at some enterprises, as well as on the finishing lines of the mother conveyor of the automobile plant. For example, while in December 2007 10 vehicles on the average came off these lines every hour, in December 2009 the automobile plant will be able to produce 23 vehicles per hour.

There is the following task for the future: “The whole of KAMAZ should become model”. Thus, for instance, 90 new model areas will be created in the main production units in 2009, including 8 ones at the automobile plant, 31 – at KAMAZ-Metallurgy, 21 – at KAMAZ-Diesel, 16 – at the Frame and Stamping Plant, 9 – at KAMAZavtotekhnika, 3 – at KAMAZinstrumentspetsmash.