Business Brief Abstract
This business brief will discuss Autoliv, a Fortune 500 company who manufactures automotive safety components (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Autoliv has over 80 plants in more than 32 countries, all of which run on a lean manufacturing system, which is referred to as “Autoliv Production System (APS) (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Toyota pioneered the principles that the APS is based on (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Another A lean system allows businesses to improve operations, by getting rid of the “unwanted waste”, such as overproduction, transportation, waiting, motion, inventory, defects, etc (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013).
The four main items that will be discussed regarding …show more content…

Two of the methods that the APS use, in regards to the JIT are Kanban, Heijunka and Jidoka. A Kanban is a Japanese term that means “card” or “visible record” which refers to cards that can control the flow of production in the entire factory (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Heijunka cards are delivered to each cell to show what needs to be done, and any supplies the employees needs to finish the lot are fulfilled by the Kanban Card System (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Autoliv’s reputation is to produce products with no flaws for customers, so using Jidoka, this helps to achieve that expectation (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Jidoka is interpreted by Autoliv, as “stop and fix” (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). This can relate to any part error, production error, machinery malfunction, or process error.

Method of Work Flow
Autoliv uses the pull work flow method due to the choice of implementing a lean system (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). The pull method of work flow is activated by customer demands of the production or services (Krajewski, Ritzman, Malhotra, 2013). Since the APS goal is to run a lean system, the pull method is the best option, because there will be very little, or no, excess inventory. Excess inventory creates waste, and that’s not how a lean system operates. This is the best option for Autoliv because excess inventory is