The Lean Enterprise Institute
This is a good place to start. They are the publisher of "Making Materials Flow" by Rick Harris, Chis Harris and Earl Wilson, which is a nice 93 page introduction to Lean Manufacturing concepts.
"Turbo Flow: Using ... PFEP ..." Book
The November 2010 book, "Turbo Flow: Using Plan for Every Part (PFEP) to Turbo Charge Your Supply Chain" by Tim Conrad and Robyn Rooks is a nice overview of how a PFEP system fits in to your overall Lean Manufacturing process. This book does show the big picture of what information needs to be connected and
managed as a single system, known as PFEP. It covers many of the things that a PFEP system should handle, relates those things to parts of the Toyota Production System and also explains how these critical items are not properly addressed by most ERP and Inventory Management systems. This book doesn't cover any of the implementation details, nor does it cover the real-world day-to-day uses of a PFEP system (like printing new labels for new Parts, etc.)
managed as a single system, known as PFEP. It covers many of the things that a PFEP system should handle, relates those things to parts of the Toyota Production System and also explains how these critical items are not properly addressed by most ERP and Inventory Management systems. This book doesn't cover any of the implementation details, nor does it cover the real-world day-to-day uses of a PFEP system (like printing new labels for new Parts, etc.)
Chris Harris's Paper from Lean.org
This paper gives a nice simple overview of what needs to be tracked in a PFEP Database and how that information gets used. Good News/Bad News - PFEP is explained in terms of a spreadsheet, in order to reach a broader audience that a discussion involving related tables. This is a great way to get started thinking about PFEP, but the wrong way to implement it. PFEP must be implemented as a fully normalized relational database. It should be implemented along side an effort to streamline your Material Flow via Lean Manufacturing concepts, such as standardized containers. A relational database approach enables and enforces this. A spreadsheet based approach enables and encourages every part to come in slightly different packaging.
Making Materials Flow
This is the Google Books preview of the Lean Enterprise Institute's "Making Materials Flow" book referenced above. It's intended as a preview and thus is only around 25% complete, but I'm including it here to help get you started:
Legal Note: I am assuming that both Google Books and DocStoc are displaying the above publications with permission of the copyright holders. Both of those services encourage other people to embed their content on their own websites. If those assumptions are wrong, hopefully the LEI and/or authors will go after those sites. At that point, their content will no longer show up here. I am including these two documents to help you get started quicker, but in any case, I still encourage you to buy the book.
