10 Things You Should Know About Lean Manufacturing
In the field of management, there are various approaches that principally aim to accelerate and boost corporate firms’ revenues and operational efficiencies.
Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy that concentrates on eliminating wastes and dividing the resources of the company into departments and business projects that requires the most immediate attention. The lean manufacturing techniques give the company the opportunity to harness the best possible mix of all the best their organization can offer.
The focus of lean manufacturing is to minimize the consumption of resources that adds no value to a product. As such, it is a process-focused production system which minimizes costs, maximizes customer options and ensures high quality and fast delivery of products and services.
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For lean manufacturing implementation to work, it has to run in phases within the company. The first phase is Core Disciplines. It requires all the concerned employees and managers to undergo lean manufacturing training. Once they’ve grasped the concepts and principles of lean manufacturing, they can now make plans for the lean manufacturing implementation in their departments.
The first of the lean manufacturing principles is the perfect first-time quality. This is a quest for having zero defects by revealing and solving the problems right at the source. By cutting all the wasted time during quality inspection at the end of the production process, efficiency is reached. How can you achieve perfect first-time quality? By taking care of the problems at the source. Usually, after a through examination of how the usual production process is undertaken, the holes or inefficiencies of the process are exposed. After that, steps are taken to solve these holes immediately.
The success of lean manufacturing is determined by how implementing companies deal with and initiate ways to achieve maximum benefits from the resources available to them without having to spend too much. Success is also driven by the reduction and eventual elimination of the so-called wastes of corporate environments. These wastes have been identified as: transportation (the movement of goods more than what is minimally needed), motion (employees working more than what are minimally required), defects (the efforts linked with inspecting and fixing problems), processing (conducting more work than what is actually needed), overproduction (leading to wasteful stockpiles) and inventory.
Lean manufacturing as a philosophy focuses on reducing the seven wastes commonly identified among global firms. Lean manufacturing attempts to help companies eliminate these unnecessary wastes to improve output quality, to maximize production and the time needed for it and mostly, to significantly save on costs. The seven wastes lean manufacturing aims to slash and eliminate in the workplace are the following:
- Over processing
- Transportation
- Motion
- Inventory
- Waiting
- Scrap and defects
Here are some of the best and most helpful books that are recommended if you want to study, look at and know more about lean manufacturing.
- 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - A book authored by Japanese expert Hiroyuki Hirano and translated by Bruce Talbot, “5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace” gives pertinent outlook and information about the visual workplace. This Book also offers a number of significant and related case studies that include 5S training materials and graphic demonstrations and illustrations.
Because the problem of insufficient and ineffective implementation of lean manufacturing principles and techniques among companies are rising and rapidly concerning, organizations and experts around the world have agreed to set standards and gauge effectiveness of implementation of lean manufacturing principles. To find out and determine whether companies are doing the right processes and techniques, and whether they are implementing maximized lean manufacturing techniques, industries gave come out with lean manufacturing certification program. Lean manufacturing certification, just like any other standard check programs, categorize companies and identify those that are effectively implementing lean manufacturing techniques within their work systems.
The principle of lean manufacturing can be applied to any business enterprise, be it small or large. The zero waste philosophy is something that any organization should follow to make more efficient and leaner systems within the company. When all parts of the company are useful, waste is reduced and the employees work better.