Understanding Lean Manufacturing

"Lean manufacturing" has become the buzzword of the 1990's thanks to James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones. In their book, The Machine That Changed the World, they presented data based on a global study of the automotive industry, and coined the term "Lean Production" to represent the best practices as exemplified most closely by the Toyota motor company. However, there is still much confusion, and misunderstanding about what is, and what is not, Lean manufacturing, and where it came from.

What is Lean? The core of Lean is based on the continuous pursuit of improving the processes, a philosophy of eliminating all non-value adding activities and reducing waste within an organization. The Value adding activities are simply only those things the customer is willing to pay for, everything else is waste, and should be eliminated, simplified, reduced, or integrated. Wastes are usually grouped into the following eight categories: overproduction, motion, inventory, defects, waiting, transportation, extra processing, and underutilized people.

How is lean manufacturing implemented? There are a number of Lean techniques available such as, Value Stream Mapping, Visual Workplace, Setup Reduction, Cellular/Flow Manufacturing, Pull Systems and Total Productive Maintenance just to name a few; however, it is absolutely essential that Lean is viewed from a total system perspective. Otherwise, either a company risks putting all of its efforts into the wrong areas, and/or the improvement process will come to a grinding halt after the initial project. In either case, potential benefits will not be realized. However, if analyzed and planned from the proper system viewpoint, the continuous implementation and improvement of the appropriate lean techniques can yield substantial gains. For example, reducing manufacturing lead time and work in process by 80-90%, and improving quality by over 75%, while simultaneously becoming more responsive to your customers, utilizing less floor space, and reducing wasteful transactions, are results obtained by the proper implementation of a Lean manufacturing strategy