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Comparative Study of Risk Assessment Value against Risk Priority Number

Karthik. S, Sivakumar. A, Sevvel. P

Manufacturers have invested billions of dollars implementing Lean principles as a way to maintain and enhance their competitiveness. Even though there are manufacturers that have become industry powerhouses by implementing Lean, there are more examples of those who have not been as successful in achieving the anticipated results. A survey conducted by industry week reveals that about only one-third of U.S. manufacturers consider Lean as their primary improvement program and experts estimate that less than 5% of US manufacturing firms are truly Lean (O’Brien, K., 2003). Most organizations utilize Lean as a way to attain short term cost reductions and adopt a mentality towards short and intermediate term efficiency gains (Smart et al., 2003). This is done to achieve increased profits and return on investments while reducing costs (Banolas, 2007). These approaches have raised questions about sustainability within organizations which implement Lean to reduce costs (Smart et al, 2003). Banolas (2008) and Smalley (2005) define the following four categories as reasons of why Lean does not sustain in organizations.  Gap of Lean knowledge  Insufficient Leadership  Change approach is insufficient  Insufficient commitment Sawhney et al(2009) proposed Risk Assessment Value(RAV) to prioritize lean issues. There is no comparative study done between RPN and RAV to prove which is better to prioritize lean issues. This paper represents a comparative study to prove why RAV is better RPN.