What is Lean?
The core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources.
A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.
To accomplish this, lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.
Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Companies are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and with very fast throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.
Lean for Production and Services
A popular misconception is that lean is suited only for manufacturing. Not true. Lean applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.
Businesses in all industries and services, including healthcare and governments, are using lean principles as the way they think and do. Many organizations choose not to use the word lean, but to label what they do as their own system, such as the Toyota Production System or the Danaher Business System. Why? To drive home the point that lean is not a program or short term cost reduction program, but the way the company operates. The word transformation or lean transformation is often used to characterize a company moving from an old way of thinking to lean thinking. It requires a complete transformation on how a company conducts business. This takes a long-term perspective and perseverance.
The term "lean" was coined to describe Toyota's business during the late 1980s by a research team headed by Jim Womack, Ph.D., at MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program.
Prime objective of waste elimination from the system is achieved with lean manufacturing technique and all tools. Based on this requirement, Just In Time (JIT) techniques, Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Flow charts, Workplace Redesigning techniques are used.
Basically, lean manufacturing technique consists of four steps. First step is to realize that there are wastes in the system to be removed. Although this seems like a crazy idea, this is the step which creates the requirement for the movement towards lean manufacturing. Many organizations do not realize that they have tons of hidden wastes with them. Therefore they do not have the requirement to remove them from the system. So they will have their problems forever and they will try to find solutions for these problems forever.
Once you realize that there are wastes to be removed from the system, in the second step, you will identify the different forms of that waste. Further, in this step you will identify the causes for these wastes. This is very important step in the process. Lean manufacturing never promotes treating the symptoms. Rather it believes treating the causes and cures the problems permanently. In this step tools like Ishikawa diagrams or cause and effect diagrams can be used for good effect.
In the third step, comes the solution finding for the identified root causes. One golden rule to be followed in this step is adhering to the basic lean manufacturing principle of seeing the total picture. Do not find solutions by only looking at causes on their surface. It is very important to identify the solution. It is even more important to identify the effect of the solution to the entire system. For an example if you are trying to reduce the line down time, it is very important to make sure the solution is not going to increase the lot sizes heavily and make the net effect on the organization a negative.
Final step is the implementation process and making sure things are going in the intended way. Here the solutions will be tested and implemented. Then these solutions will be tweaked to accommodate practical difficulties occur in the implementation process. User training and follow-up are among the most important things in this step of lean manufacturing technique. This step generally takes long time.
In each and every step mentioned above, many tools will be used to achieve the goals of each step. Make sure to look at the entirety, not a part of the problem. Solution you find must have a positive effect on the entire system.
The core idea is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply, lean means creating more value for customers with fewer resources.
A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.
To accomplish this, lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.
Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Companies are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and with very fast throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.
Lean for Production and Services
A popular misconception is that lean is suited only for manufacturing. Not true. Lean applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.
Businesses in all industries and services, including healthcare and governments, are using lean principles as the way they think and do. Many organizations choose not to use the word lean, but to label what they do as their own system, such as the Toyota Production System or the Danaher Business System. Why? To drive home the point that lean is not a program or short term cost reduction program, but the way the company operates. The word transformation or lean transformation is often used to characterize a company moving from an old way of thinking to lean thinking. It requires a complete transformation on how a company conducts business. This takes a long-term perspective and perseverance.
The term "lean" was coined to describe Toyota's business during the late 1980s by a research team headed by Jim Womack, Ph.D., at MIT's International Motor Vehicle Program.
Lean manufacturing technique
Prime objective of waste elimination from the system is achieved with lean manufacturing technique and all tools. Based on this requirement, Just In Time (JIT) techniques, Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Flow charts, Workplace Redesigning techniques are used.
Basically, lean manufacturing technique consists of four steps. First step is to realize that there are wastes in the system to be removed. Although this seems like a crazy idea, this is the step which creates the requirement for the movement towards lean manufacturing. Many organizations do not realize that they have tons of hidden wastes with them. Therefore they do not have the requirement to remove them from the system. So they will have their problems forever and they will try to find solutions for these problems forever.
Once you realize that there are wastes to be removed from the system, in the second step, you will identify the different forms of that waste. Further, in this step you will identify the causes for these wastes. This is very important step in the process. Lean manufacturing never promotes treating the symptoms. Rather it believes treating the causes and cures the problems permanently. In this step tools like Ishikawa diagrams or cause and effect diagrams can be used for good effect.
In the third step, comes the solution finding for the identified root causes. One golden rule to be followed in this step is adhering to the basic lean manufacturing principle of seeing the total picture. Do not find solutions by only looking at causes on their surface. It is very important to identify the solution. It is even more important to identify the effect of the solution to the entire system. For an example if you are trying to reduce the line down time, it is very important to make sure the solution is not going to increase the lot sizes heavily and make the net effect on the organization a negative.
Final step is the implementation process and making sure things are going in the intended way. Here the solutions will be tested and implemented. Then these solutions will be tweaked to accommodate practical difficulties occur in the implementation process. User training and follow-up are among the most important things in this step of lean manufacturing technique. This step generally takes long time.
In each and every step mentioned above, many tools will be used to achieve the goals of each step. Make sure to look at the entirety, not a part of the problem. Solution you find must have a positive effect on the entire system.