The current industrial constraints on production systems, especially availability problems

are complicating maintenance managers’ mission and making longer and further performance

improvement process. Dealing with these problems in a wiser managerial vision respecting

sustainability dimensions would be more efficient to optimize all resources. In this paper, and

after addressing the lean/sustainability challenge in a the literature to define main research

orientations and critical points in manufacturing and then maintenance specific context, two

case studies have been conducted in two production systems in Morocco and Canada, within

the objective to set a clearer scene of the lean philosophy implementation in maintenance

and within the sustainability scope from an empirical perspective. To activate the social dimension

being often non-integrated in the lean/sustainability initiatives, the article authors

reveal an original research direction assigning maintenance logistics as the leading part of our

approach to cover all sustainability dimensions. Furthermore, its management is discussed

for the first time in a sustainable framework, where the authors propose a new model considering

the lean/sustainable perspective and inspired by the rich Human-Machine interaction

memory to solve daily maintenance problems exploiting the operators’ experience feedback.

The article presents the issues of costs analysis of iron casts manufacturing using automated foundry lines. Particular attention was paid to departmental costs, conversion costs and costs of in-plant transport. After the Pareto analysis had been carried out, it was possible to set the model area of the process and focus on improving activities related to finishing of a chosen group of casts. In order to eliminate losses, the activities realised in this domain were divided into activities with added value, activities with partially added value and activities without added value. To streamline the production flow, it was proposed to change the location of workstations related to grinding, control and machining of casts. Within the process of constant improvement of manufacturing processes, the aspect of work ergonomics at a workstation was taken into account. As a result of the undertaken actions, some activities without added value were eliminated, efficiency was increased and prime costs of manufacturing casts with regard to finishing treatment were lowered.

The article presents issues related to creating and realizing added value by logistic processes and processing in a casting enterprise. It discusses possibilities of improving systems of casts production by evaluating labour intensity of casts manufacture and analyzing manufacturing prime costs. Operations with added value, processes indirectly creating added value and operations without added value have been specified. The problem was presented on the example of materials flow design in a foundry, where casts are manufactured in expendable moulds and using automated foundry lines. On the basis of the Pareto analysis, a group of casts was specified whose manufacture significantly influences the functioning of the whole enterprise. Finishing treatment operations have been particularly underlined, as they are performed away from the line and are among the most labour-consuming processes during casts production.