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The final installment of our Job Shop Lean series includes a wide variety of educational resources to help you continue your own lean journey.

When it comes to purchasing gear lubricants, many people on both the sales and purchasing side decide to play the numbers game. The person with the most numbers, or the biggest numbers, or the lowest numbers, must have the best product - right? Wrong; gear oil selection is not a game, and numbers alone cannot determine the right product for an application.

Interviews with exhibitors at ASM's Heat Treat 2013 exposition, which is co-located with Gear Expo.

Readers respond to our "Job Shop Lean" column and the "My Gear is Bigger than Your Gear" article.

Job shops may be ill-advised to undertake a complete reorganization into FLEAN (Flexible and Lean) cells. A FLEAN cell would (i) be flex-ible enough to produce any and all orders for parts that belong in a specific part family and (ii) utilize lean to the maximum extent possible to eliminate waste.

Following is a report from The Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI). Founded in 1933, the alliance contributes to the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing by providing economic research, professional development, and an independent, expert source of manufacturing information.

Although a cell is dedicated to produce a single part family, it must have the requisite equipment capabilities, routing flexibility, cross-trained employees and, to the extent possible, minimal external process dependencies. Cells are often implemented in job shops since they provide the operational benefits of flowline production.

A gear design optimization approach applied to reduce tooth contact temperature and noise excitation of a high-speed spur gear pair running without lubricant. Optimum gear design search was done using the Run Many Cases software program. Thirty-one of over 480,000 possible gear designs were considered, based on low contact temperature and low transmission error. The best gear design was selected considering its manufacturability.