ESSAY #1.
Read the following case study from the book. Please answer the questions at the end in more detail. The maximum number of pages is two. Answer as best as you can. Let me know if you have any questions.

Business Case: Efficiency, Opportunity Cost and the logic of lean Production at Boeing
Pg. 44 Ch.2

In the summer and fall of 2010, workers were rearranging the furniture in Boeing’s final assembly plant in Everett, Washington, in preparation for the production of the Boeing 767. It was a difficult and time-consuming process, however, because the items of “furniture”—Boeing’s assembly equipment—weighed on the order of
200 tons each. It was a necessary part of setting up a production system based on
“lean manufacturing,” also called “just-in-time” production. Lean manufacturing, pioneered by Toyota Motors of Japan, is based on the practice of having parts arrive on the factory floor just as they are needed for production. This reduces the amount of parts Boeing holds in inventory as well as the amount of the factory floor needed for production—in this case, reducing the square footage required for manufacture of the 767 by 40%.

Boeing had adopted lean manufacturing in 1999 in the manufacture of the
737, the most popular commercial airplane. By 2005, after constant refinement,
Boeing had achieved a 50% reduction in the time it takes to produce a plane and a nearly 60% reduction in parts inventory. An important feature is a continuously moving assembly line, moving products from one assembly team to the next at a steady pace and eliminating the need for workers to wander across the factory floor from task to task or in search of tools and parts.

Toyota’s lean production techniques have been the most widely adopted of all manufacturing techniques and have revolutionized manufacturing worldwide.
In simple terms, lean production is