Lean is a process improvement system best suited for organizations looking to transform their business; it is not a set of repair tools.
The Lean Production System is a manufacturing philosophy focusing on customer value, continuous improvement, and waste elimination. It’s not just reducing the time it takes to bring a product or service to market; it also involves eliminating activities that do not create value for customers.
Lean focuses on continuous improvement, waste reduction, and productivity increase through the effective use of resources.
The Lean Production System can be applied to all types of industries worldwide. The most common examples are automotive, aerospace, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.
Read Who Is Lean Management For?
You’ve heard the adage about not fixing what isn’t broken, right?
This holds in many cases when it comes to manufacturing — but not in ways you might think.
The best way to improve your processes is by transforming them instead of repairing them.
So how do you go about transforming your assembly process? The first step is identifying the tools that can help you do so. These include
Design for Manufacturability (DFM) — designing parts that are easy to manufacture using existing equipment and processes.
This has become particularly important as companies start producing more products locally and rely on suppliers abroad for components or subassemblies.
DFM helps ensure that parts are made according to specifications and don’t require expensive machines or specialty tools when they come off the line at a factory.
Design for Assembly (DFA) — a strategy applied during product development that determines how easily each part should be assembled into individual units before being integrated into larger systems, such as machinery or vehicles, built by manufacturers operating on lean principles like Toyota or BMW.
Also, Read Management Tools Vs. Management Philosophy – Lean Management
For your organization to successfully transition from traditional production systems into lean production systems, begin with these:
Focus on Customer Value.
This means you need to determine what your customers want and need. The goal is to create an efficient process and deliver high-quality products or services at an affordable price while ensuring positive outcomes for everyone involved (including suppliers).
Eliminate Waste
Waste is any activity within your company that does not generate value for customers or your company itself (or both). You can cut costs without sacrificing quality or efficiency by eliminating these unnecessary process steps and improving flexibility while enhancing profitability.
The key to reducing waste is to identify the activities in your business that do not add value for customers (or your company itself).
Eliminate Defects
Do you know the difference between a defect and waste?
Waste is any activity that does not add value to your product, including rework, waiting time, overproduction, and inventory.
A defect is a non-conformance to specifications or an error in creating the product.
Defects are expensive! Defects cause rework and eat into production time and resources.
They cost money to fix, prevent and detect and cause delays in shipping your product (and therefore costing customers money too).
Defects come from people working hard under difficult conditions trying their best but not having all the necessary tools for success!
Re-engineer Current Processes and Process Flow.
Process Flow Diagram and Value Stream Mapping (VSM): This is essentially an oracle that has the answers to all of your problems. It’s a chart that shows how you currently make things, and it will allow you to see where inefficiencies exist. The key to identifying these issues is understanding how your processes are working (or not).
Change Management
To transform an organization, it is necessary to implement changes that will enable you to achieve your goals.
Change management is a critical element in the transformation of an organization, and therefore it should be considered a continuous process. It is one of the most important factors affecting productivity and quality at work.
Make a Dedicated Continuous Improvement Team
A team is a group of individuals committed to reaching a common goal through cooperation, empowerment, and shared responsibilities.
A cross-functional team brings together all the necessary skills and resources to work on a project. It also has limited authority over its own decisions, delegated by a higher authority.
A self-managed team is one where members are responsible for deciding how best to perform their tasks rather than being told what needs doing. This can be combined with other structures like matrix or project management structures.
Matrix structure involves people working across functions within an organization at any given time; this enables companies to be more efficient by having specialists on hand when needed.
The project management structure ensures that each member has enough autonomy to do their job correctly without having too much control over others’ work.
The Right Allocation Of Resources
The proper allocation of resources is the key to success. Resources can be people, equipment, and materials, and the allocation should be based on the requirements of the process and product.
It is now time for your organization to transform its business and become a lean enterprise. The Lean Production System, best suits organizations looking to transform their business. It helps ensure that there is no waste of resources, time, or money involved in any activity and helps improve customer satisfaction by providing value-added products and services at competitive prices.
At Vineet Sethi Consulting, we believe that Business and People are two sides of the same coin. Our approach to transforming organizations, teams, and individuals is based on Standard Customization, stemming from the philosophy that no one size fits all.
Contact us at hello@vineetsethi.com or on our social media channels for more information.