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September 2016 • The PCB Magazine 67 The effort to achieve JIT exposes many quality problems that are hidden by buffer stocks; by forcing smooth flow of only value-adding steps, these problems become visible and must be dealt with explicitly. These are just a few of the benefits of a solid JIT process: • Fast improvement (a result of focusing all attention on one critical area (the system constraint) • Improved capacity (optimizing the constraint enables more product to be manufactured) • Reduced lead times (optimizing the constraint results in smoother and faster product flow) • Reduced inventory (eliminating bottlenecks means there will be less work-in-process) Design for Manufacturing/ Assembly (DFM/A) DFM/A is essential to ensuring that products are being designed to utilize the highly auto- mated, continuous-flow process [5] . Managing Design Data (CAD to CAM) An all-digital chain of data is essential to uti- lize a continuous-automated process flow. This will be highlighted in a future column entitled "Predictive Engineering," scheduled for pub- lication in the I-Connect007 Daily Newsletter later this year. Design Flow Processes/Level Schedules (Theory of Constraints) The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a meth- odology for identifying the most important lim- iting factor (i.e., constraint) that stands in the LEAN MANUFACTURING Figure 1: Lean manufacturing is built on four pillars: Demand pull production; level scheduled flow processes; design for manufacturing; and managed design data to manufacturing.