Manufacturing Lead Time Reduction and Knowledge Sharing in the Manufacturing Sector
At this time, companies' need to improve their manufacturing competitiveness in terms of better, faster and cheaper products has led to a range of approaches including 'just in time' lead time reduction; lean manufacture; using social networks; and knowledge sharing, in order to be first to get products and services to customers faster. Companies seek to reduce manufacturing lead time (MLT) in order to reduce the cost of production; short lead times are a major source of potential competitive advantage. This paper proposes a study on reducing MLT in factories in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where lead time has become a major issue for the manufacturing industry. The aim is to provide guidance to industry practitioners and technicians on how to reduce MLT. The paper will present a conceptual framework of the causes and will use knowledge sharing sources such as social media to survey the factors that have significant impact on lead time. It will also describe the relationship between setup time, operation time, and non operation time in order to find potential methodologies that can reduce lead time in the manufacturing process and identify simple strategies for reducing lead time.