L E A N

Lean manufacturing is a production process based on an ideology of maximizing productivity while simultaneously minimizing waste within a manufacturing operation. The lean principle sees waste as anything that doesn’t add value that the customers are willing to pay for.

The benefits of lean manufacturing include reduced lead times and operating costs and improved product quality.

Also known as lean production, the methodology is based on specific manufacturing principles that have influenced production systems across the world as well as those of other industries including healthcare, software and various service industries.

?How Does Lean Manufacturing Work?

The core principle in implementing lean manufacturing is to eliminate waste to continually improve a process. By reducing waste to deliver process improvements, lean manufacturing sustainably delivers value to the customer.?

The types of waste include processes, activities, products or services that require time, money or skills but do not create value for the customer. These can cover underused talent, excess inventories or ineffective or wasteful processes and procedures.

Removing these inefficiencies should streamline services, reduce costs and ultimately provide savings for a specific product or service through the supply chain to the customer.

Why is Lean Manufacturing Important and How Can it Help?

Waste in industry, whether that is idle workers, poor processes or unused materials are a drain on productivity, and lean manufacturing aims to eliminate these. The motives behind this vary depending on opinion, from increasing profits to providing benefits to customers.?However, whatever the overarching motives, there are four key benefits to lean manufacture:

Eliminate Waste: Waste is a negative factor for cost, deadlines and resources. It provides no value to products or services

Improve Quality: Improved quality allows companies to stay competitive and meet the changing needs and wants of customers. Designing processes to meet these expectations and desires keep you ahead of the competition, keeping quality improvement at the forefront

Reducing Costs: Overproduction or having more materials than is required creates storage costs, which can be reduced through better processes and materials management

Reducing Time: Wasting time with inefficient working practices is a waste of money too, while more efficient practices create shorter lead times and allow for goods and services to be delivered faster

When and Who Invented Lean Manufacturing?

The basic ideals of lean manufacturing have arguably existed for centuries, but really became solidified with Benjamin Franklin’s writing on reducing waste in his ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack,’ where he wrote that avoiding unnecessary costs could provide more profit than increasing sales.

Franklin put down this idea and other concepts in his essay, ‘The Way to Wealth,’ which was then expanded upon by mechanical engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor in his 1911 book, ‘Principles of Scientific Management.’ Taylor codified the process, calling it scientific management and writing, “whenever a workman proposes an improvement, it should be the policy of the management to make a careful analysis of the new method, and if necessary conduct a series of experiments to determine accurately the relative merit of the new suggestion and of the old standard. And whenever the new method is found to be markedly superior to the old, it should be adopted as the standard for the whole establishment."

American industrialists of the time, including Henry Ford, saw lean manufacturing as a measure to combat the influx of cheap offshore labour. The President of the American Society of Engineers, Henry Towne wrote in the foreword to Frederick Winslow Taylor’s ‘Shop Management’ (1911) that, "We are justly proud of the high wage rates which prevail throughout our country, and jealous of any interference with them by the products of the cheaper labour of other countries. To maintain this condition, to strengthen our control of home markets, and, above all, to broaden our opportunities in foreign markets where we must compete with the products of other industrial nations, we should welcome and encourage every influence tending to increase the efficiency of our productive processes."

However, it was Shigeo Shingo and Taiichi Ohno of the Toyota Motor Corporation who really progressed these views to become what was later dubbed lean manufacturing. Shingo revealed that he was "greatly impressed to make the study and practice of scientific management his life's work" after reading Frederick Taylor’s ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ in 1931.

Having previously been a textile company, Toyota moved into producing automobiles in 1934 and won a truck contract with the Japanese government in 1936. However, as Kiichiro Toyoda, founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, directed the engine casting work he discovered problems with their manufacturing, including wasted resources on repair of poor-quality castings. Toyoda conducted a study of each stage of the production process and created ‘Kaizen’ improvement teams to address the problems. The findings of the Kaizen teams were brought together by Taiichi Ohno to create the Toyota Production System (TPS).

By the post-war period of the later 1940s, the levels of demand in the Japanese economy were low, so Ohno determined that work schedules should be driven by actual sales rather than sales or production targets. This meant avoiding costly over-production and led Toyota to establish ‘pull’ (or build-to-order) rather than target-driven ‘push’ production scheduling.

TPS, which was known as ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing or JIT in the 1980s, developed into lean manufacturing in the later 1980s and into the 1990s. A quality engineer called John Krafcik first coined the term lean manufacturing in his 1988 article ‘Triumph of the Lean Production System’ after working on a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors in California.

Krafcik stated that lean manufacturing plants have higher levels of productivity/quality than non-Lean and, "the level of plant technology seems to have little effect on operating performance." He continued by adding that the risks of implementing lean processes can be lessened by "developing a well-trained, flexible workforce, product designs that are easy to build with high quality, and a supportive, high-performance supplier network."

The term lean manufacturing was detailed further by James Womack, Daniel T. Jones and Daniel Roos in the 1990 book ‘The Machine that Changed the World.’ Womack and Jones further defined this in their 1996 book, ‘Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation,’ where five key principles were laid out, “Precisely specify value by specific product, identify the value stream for each product, make value flow without interruptions, let customer pull value from the producer, and pursue perfection.”

What is the Meaning of Lean Manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing entails streamlining processes and procedures to eliminate waste and thereby maximise productivity. Womack and Jones (see above) defined lean as, “a way to do more and more with less and less - less human effort, less equipment, less time, and less space - while coming closer and closer to providing customers exactly what they want."

The basis of lean is often translated into five core principles.

What are the 5 Principles?

The five core principles of lean manufacturing are defined as value, the value stream, flow, pull and perfection. These are now used as the basis to implement lean.

1. Value: Value is determined from the perspective of the customer and relates to how much they are willing to pay for products or services. This value is then created by the manufacturer or service provider who should seek to eliminate waste and costs to meet the optimal price for the customer while also maximizing profits.

2. Map the Value Stream: This principle involves analyzing the materials and other resources required to produce a product or service with the aim of identifying waste and improvements. The value stream covers the entire lifecycle of a product, from raw materials to disposal. Each stage of the production cycle needs to be examined for waste and anything that doesn’t add value should be removed. Chain alignment is often recommended as a means to achieve this step.

Modern manufacturing streams are often complex, requiring the combined efforts of engineers, scientists, designers and more, with the actual manufacturing of a physical product being just one part of a wider stream of work.

3. Create Flow: Creating flow is about removing functional barriers to improve lead times. This ensures that processes flow smoothly and can be undertaken with minimal delay or other waste. Interrupted and disharmonious production processes incur costs and creating flow means ensuring a constant stream for the production or service delivery.

4. Establish a Pull System: A pull system works by only commencing work when there is demand. This is the opposite of push systems, which are used in manufacturing resource planning (MRP) systems. Push systems determine inventories in advance with production set to meet these sales or production forecasts. However, due to the inaccuracy of many forecasts, this can result in either too much or not enough of a product being produced to meet demand. This can lead to additional warehousing costs, disrupted schedules or poor customer satisfaction. A pull system only acts when there is demand and relies on flexibility, communication and efficient processes to be successfully achieved.

The pull system can involve teams only moving onto new tasks as the previous steps have been completed, allowing the team to adapt to challenges as they arise in the knowledge that the prior work is mostly still applicable to delivering the product or service.

5. Perfection: The pursuit of perfection via continued process improvements is also known as ‘Kaizen’ as created by Toyota Motor Corporation founder Kiichiro Toyoda (see ‘When and Who Invented Lean Manufacturing?’ above). Lean manufacturing requires ongoing assessment and improvement of processes and procedures to continually eliminate waste in an effort to find the perfect system for the value stream. To make a meaningful and lasting difference, the notion of continuous improvement should be integrated through the culture of an organisation and requires the measurement of metrics such as lead-times, production cycles, throughput and cumulative flow.

It is important for the culture of continuous improvement to filter through all levels of an organisation, from team members and project managers right up to the executive level, to create a collective responsibility for improvement and value creation.

Top 10 Wastes of Lean Manufacturing

As a quick, whistle-stop reminder, Lean Manufacturing is a concept developed during the 1990s – at the time, referred to as the Toyota Production System (TPS). It sets out to clarify the processes within the manufacturing timeline that add value, and eliminate the processes that inhibit it.

TPS identified the “seven wastes”, which we’ll be exploring in this article. But it doesn’t stop there?

?– we’ll be examining some additional areas of waste that affect the factory line.

TIM WOOD

The TPS “seven wastes” are easily remembered via the acronym – “TIM WOOD”

Transport, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-Processing, Overproduction, Defects

What is Waste in Lean Manufacturing?

Waste is anything that adds no value. When your production line follows a large number of processes, it’s inevitable that, over time, elements of that process develop that hamper the efficiency of the build. This costs the manufacturer money, which, in turn, gets transferred to the customer.

Eliminating waste is an essential component in a company’s ability to compete; while helping increase profits.

Your customers expect timely delivery, consistent quality and the right price. So, streamlining your processes to remove waste is essential.

1. Transport

Unnecessary transportation of goods within a factory-line is the product of a variety of problems: poor factory-floor layout; complex handling systems; large batch sizes; storage in multiple locations; and over-production. These all result in unnecessary transportation.

The movement of materials from location to location is a waste because it adds no value. You need to pay people to move materials, and the maintenance of vehicles is costly. A poor floor layout can increase the distance between operations, resulting in delays in processing and expensive transportation costs.

2. Inventory

Inventory costs the manufacturer money until it has been sold on to the customer. Every finished product or material component requires storage space; waiting on the shelf to be sold.

Large amounts of inventory increase the chance of transit damage and cause delays in transportation.

3. Motion

Unnecessary motion occurs where movements by either man or machine are not as small or as simple as they could be. It could be that your engineer needs to bend down to pick up heavy objects multiple times throughout a shift – this puts strain on their back and could be eliminated by merely feeding those materials at waist-height, rather than on the floor.

This is all common sense because even robots will wear out eventually.

4. Waiting

A sloppy production timeline results in unsynchronized activity, causing waiting within the production process. Idle time occurs when interdependent procedures are not in sync:?operators are kept waiting, or work slowly to accommodate slack cogs in the wheel.

5. Overproduction

Overproduction breeds waste! It results from producing more product than your customer requires.

This causes storage problems from unnecessarily large batch sizes, and an inability to respond to customer needs.

If your customer wants 150 pieces of x and 12 pieces of y, but you already have 700 pieces of y and only 10 pieces of x, then your customer is going to have to wait for your to produce to their requirement.

Streamlining your processes to meet customer needs means that product is sent directly to the customer, in a timely fashion (and not stored).

6. Over-processing

Over-processing occurs where elements of your manufacture don’t add value. Painting of unseen parts of the product; cleaning or polishing beyond required levels: these are manifestations of over-processing.

Aim to process to the degree that is useful and necessary.

Over-processing is generally caused by a lack of standardization, unclear specifications, and inconsistent quality acceptance standards.

7. Defects

Defective goods are the most apparent waste. While faults can never be eliminated entirely, you can reduce them by implementing poka-yoke systems (processes that help equipment operators to avoid mistakes).

This requires thorough documentation of processes and standardized training so that everyone follows a standard set of operations to achieve a uniform result.

8. Wasted Talent

If an employee is simply moving materials or equipment from one place to another (transportation), then that person’s talents are being under-utilized.

Non-utilized talent equally refers to management’s ignorance of continuous improvement feedback that comes from those operating the machines. If management fails to engage with talent, it’s considered a waste in lean manufacturing terms.

9. Ineffective Performance Measures

Machine monitoring is a valuable resource for transitioning a process to lean manufacturing. By obtaining an accurate data-reflection of current processes, you can identify waste.

You can also empower the workforce by providing the ability to monitor their own performance and recognize productivity norms, while rewarding uniform, standardized working practices.

10. Poor Supplier Quality

No production process can overcome an unreliable supplier. If you need materials to produce, then you need to be able to rely on your suppliers to make sure your processes are as efficient as they can be.

Of course, there are always extenuating circumstances, but if your suppliers are continuously letting you down, it might be time to look elsewhere.

?These types of waste can be broadly split into three specific types:

Mura: Unevenness or waste as a result of fluctuating demand, whether from customer requests or new services (and thereby additional work) being added by an organisation.

Muri: Overburden or waste due to trying to do too much. This relates to resource allocation and involves people being asked to do too much. Time can be wasted as people switch tasks or even lose motivation due to being overburdened.

Muda: This is process-related waste and work that adds no value. If an activity doesn’t add value, or directly support one that adds value, then it is unnecessary and should be eliminated.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Lean manufacturing carries several advantages and disadvantages depending on how and where it is implemented.

Advantages:

1. Saves Time and Money

Cost-saving is the most obvious advantage of lean manufacture. More efficient workflows, resource allocation, production and storage can benefit businesses regardless of size or output. Time saving allows for reduced lead times and better service in providing products quickly to customers, but can also help save money through allowing for a more streamlined workforce.

2. Environmentally Friendly

Reducing waste in time and resources and removing unnecessary processes can save the costs in energy and fuel use. This has an obvious environmental benefit, as does the use of more energy efficient equipment, which can also offer cost savings.

3. Improved Customer Satisfaction

Improving the delivery of a product or service, at the right cost, to a customer improves customer satisfaction. This is essential to business success as happy customers are more likely to return or recommend your product or service to others.

Disadvantages:

1. Employee Safety and Wellbeing

Critics of lean argue that it can ignore employee safety and wellbeing. By focussing on removing waste and streamlining procedures it is possible to overlook the stresses placed on employees who are given little margin for error in the workplace. Lean has been compared to 19th Century scientific management techniques that were fought against by labour reforms and believed obsolete by the 1930s.

2. Hinders Future Development

Lean manufacturing’s inherent focus on cutting waste can lead management to cut areas of a company that are not deemed essential to current strategy. However, these may be important to a company’s legacy and future development. Lean can create an over-focus on the present and disregard the future.

3. Difficult to Standardize

Some critics point out that lean manufacturing is a culture rather than a set method, meaning that it is impossible to create a standard lean production model. This can create a perception that lean is a loose and vague technique rather than a robust one.

What is an Example of Lean Manufacturing?

Lean manufacturing is used across industry for a variety of production processes, although notably, it was first seen within the automotive industry.

Creating efficient workflows and processes is important to maximising output on a production line, which in itself harks back to Adam Smith’s 1776 ‘Division of Labour,’ where he noted how the efficiency of production was vastly improved if workers were split up and given different roles in the making of pins. This was because workers could be tasked with work that suited their skills or temperament, there was no need to move them from their stations or for them to learn different skills or swap tools.

Lean manufacturing has drawn on these ideas and extended them to include removing waste from multiple processes and procedures. Lean methods can also be seen outside of production with the provision of services too.

How Can Lean Manufacturing be Implemented?

The general meaning of lean is to identify and eliminate waste, from which quality and production times can be improved and costs reduced. This is one method of approaching lean manufacturing, but it can also be approached using the ‘Toyota Way,’ which is to focus on improving workflows rather than waste.

Both methods have the same goals, but with the Toyota Way the waste is eliminated naturally rather than being sought out as the focus. Followers of this method of implementation say it is a system-wide perspective that can benefit an entire business rather than just removing particular wastes. The Toyota Way seeks to simplify the operational structure of an organisation in order to be able to understand and manage the work environment. This method also uses mentoring known as ‘Senpai and Kohai’ (Senior and Junior) to help foster lean thinking right through an organisational structure.

However, despite the different approaches both methods share a number of principles, including:

• Automation
• Continuous Improvement
• Flexibility
• Load Levelling
• Perfect First-Time Production or Service Quality
• Production Flow and Visual Control
• Pull Processing
• Supplier Relationships
• Waste Removal

Tips to Implement Lean Processes

As they introduced the concepts of lean manufacturing in their writing, Womack and Jones also explained why some lean organisations succeeded while others failed. The main difference was that those who failed copied specific practices while the successful organisations sought to understand the underlying principles required to make the whole lean system work.

Becoming lean is a continuous process of change that needs to be assessed and monitored. It will require frequent changes and adjustments in your working practices to maintain.

Creating a lean toolbox of methods can help simplify your lean management systems, but you should remember that lean is more of a philosophy than a standardised set of procedures.??

Despite this, there are four steps that you can take to help create your own lean project management system:

1. Design a Simple Manufacturing System

The more you break down your systems into their simple, composite parts, the easier each will be to monitor and improve through eliminating waste.

2. Keep Searching for Ways to Improve

Staff at all levels should be encouraged and supported in finding ways to improve processes and procedures. It is important to have an honest overview of procedures in order to find areas for improvement. The more specific these improvements are to your particular company and processes, the more effective they will be.

3. Continuously Implement Design Improvements

It is not enough to seek out improvements. These need to be implemented through your designs, procedures and processes. It is not enough to just seek improvements, they need to be put into practice on a practical level too. Any improvements should also be backed up by improvement metrics and it is often best to make small incremental changes rather than large sweeping ones.

4. Seek Staff Buy-In

In order to effectively achieve the first three steps you need to gain the support of your staff. The whole methodology can suffer if management decides to implement it without gaining the buy-in of employees. Since waste, and therefore lean, is an overall concept across the entire business, it requires management to identify and understand the true problems that need to be solved.

Employees can block the success of lean management by pushing back, especially if the burden of managing and implementing lean is placed upon their shoulders. A good solution to this is to create a ‘lean plan’ where teams can provide feedback and suggestions to management, who then make the final decision on any changes. Coaching is also important to explain concepts and impart knowledge to employees at all levels.

?Lean vs Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a method of data-driven management that is similar to lean in that it also seeks to assess and eliminate process defects to improve quality. However, while both processes seek to eliminate waste, they use different approaches to do so.

While lean contends that waste is a product of additional steps, processes and features that a customer doesn’t believe add value, Six Sigma sees waste as a product of process variation.

Despite the differences, Six Sigma and lean can be combined to create a data-driven approach called ‘Lean Six Sigma.’

?Lean manufacturing is a methodology that can help streamline and improve manufacturing processes or other services in order to provide enhanced benefits for customers, while saving time and money through the elimination of waste. As a methodology, lean is best applied across the entirety of an organisation with continual monitoring and improvements being applied with the support of employees at all levels.

There is an ongoing debate in some organizations regarding the difference between lean and six sigma, and whether they are mutually exclusive. Toyota, in particular, is credited with making lean a well-known approach as embodied in the Toyota Production System (TPS). Lean is about eliminating wastes, taking time out of processes, and creating better flow. Taiichi Ohno summarized the essence of lean (TPS) as “All we’re trying to do is shorten the timeline from order receipt to collecting the cash for the goods or services provided.”

Six Sigma has been defined in a variety of ways. One definition states, “Six Sigma is a business strategy and philosophy built around the concept that companies can gain a competitive edge by reducing defects in their industrial and commercial processes.” There are some explanations from the points of view of lean and six sigma purists. From an Improvement perspective, Six Sigma reduces variation and Lean reduces waste. Six Sigma aims at a process performance of 3.4 Defects per Million opportunity and Lean focuses on improving speed.

Six Sigma has a flare to improve the cost of poor quality and Lean improves Operating costs. Six Sigma has a longer learning curve and lean has a shorter one. Six Sigma uses various approaches to process improvements whereas lean mainly use value stream mapping. The project length for a six sigma project is 2 to 6 months and for a lean is 1 week to 3 months.

Data is the main driver in a six sigma project while demand is the main driver for lean. Six Sigma projects are of higher complexities while Lean projects are of moderate complexities.

Should six sigma and lean coexist in any organization?

The answer to this question is self-evident and it is “Yes”. Lean approaches should precede and coexist with the application of six sigma methods. Lean provides stability and repeatability in many basic processes. Once stability has taken hold, much of the variation due to human processes goes away. The data collected to support six sigma activities thereby become much more reliable and accurate. Lean and six sigma tools can be depicted on a linear continuum with lean six sigma in the middle.

Major business problems fall into the following categories:

There seems to be a lot of waste

There is a need to minimize inventories and redundancies.

There is a need to improve workflows.

There is a need to speed up processes.

There are human mistakes

If so, then lean tools should be utilized to:

1. Simplify processes:

If processes are more complex, we would require a highly trained task force to execute the activities of those processes. Hence, processes should be simplified as much as possible and Lean tools could be used to do that.

2. Increase speeds:

Speed is a very important factor for the customer. If a speed component is improved, it has a direct correlation with customer satisfaction.

3. Improve flows:

If the flow of product is not streamlined during the production phase, it could lead to bottlenecks, increase in idle time and much more. Hence, wherever possible, Lean tools should be used to improve flows within our processes.

4. Minimize inventories:

Inventories are critical aspects of a given process. Larger inventories lead to higher costs of real estate, it also leads to raw material wear and tear and much more. Similarly, smaller levels of inventories lead to a halt in production due to non-availability of raw materials when required.

Mistake-proof processes:

Lean is effectively used to reduce or eliminate mistakes in given processes. However, if organizational challenges exhibit the following attributes:

• There are quality issues
• There is an excessive variation
• There are complex problems
• There are challenging root cause identifications
• There are numerous technical considerations

In these cases, six sigma tools should be utilized to:

• Minimize variation
• Apply scientific problem-solving
• Utilize robust project chartering
• Focus on quality issues
• Employ technical methodologies

Most executives recognize that they have a combination of both sets of issues. Placing lean six sigma in the middle of this continuum reflects a more holistic and synergistic approach. If a specific problem requires only lean or six sigma tools, then that is perfectly okay. Lean six sigma is a relatively new paradigm providing a broader selection of approaches.

An increasing number of organizations (manufacturing, service, hospitals, municipalities, military, insurance, etc.) have been unifying their efforts into a lean six sigma approach. The mechanisms of these combinations vary widely. The most effective approaches include management direction and involvement, a cadre of trained specialists, the use of teamwork, the use of project management, team member training, the humane treatment of people, an understandable problem-solving methodology, and some mechanism to apply the appropriate tools.

?List of Lean Manufacturing Tools

There are many Lean Manufacturing Tools and other ideas and principles that are associated with Lean. Most of these tools should be implemented within the main principles of Lean and as part of a clearly defined and planned roll out to improve your business.

Each of the tools can be implemented on its own, however, the greatest value will always come as part of a comprehensive implementation of lean. These tools are suitable for all forms of businesses and can be applicable to both manufacturing and service companies.

The following are some of the most important lean tools that you should implement and use within your business:

Top 50 Popular Lean Tools

Standardized Work

Standardized operations are required before you start anything else. If there is no clear and agreed way of performing the work then you have a vast opportunity for variation between how the work will be done. Processes should be agreed, documented, and controlled to ensure that we perform them in the most effective way every time. Standardized work provides us with a baseline from which we can start to make improvements. If there is no agreed way of working then you cannot know if any changes you have made are responsible for any improvements.

Standard Work in Lean Manufacturing Defined

In Lean Manufacturing, standardized work is a means of establishing precise procedures to make products in the safest, easiest, and most effective way based on current technologies. Standardized work is one of the principles of Lean Manufacturing. It requires three elements:

• ?Takt time: Rate at which parts or products must be produced in order to meet customer demand.
• Work Sequence: The steps operators need to perform within Takt time, in the order in which they must be completed.
• Standard inventory (or in-process stock): Minimum quantity of parts and raw materials needed to run operations.

?Benefits of standardized work

1. Reduces variability

By standardizing the most efficient way to perform processes, standardized work reduces variations in the output. Work becomes predictable: quality, costs, required inventory, and delivery times can be anticipated.

?2. Helps your people

Shop floor operators are sometimes under the impression that their highly variable work cannot be standardized, or that implementing standards will make their work boring. Quite the opposite: enforcing standardized work increases efficiency, thus making more time for creative work. Standardized work also helps operators structure their work. It removes pressure on operators by reducing the stress of performing tasks improperly. Finally, standardized work makes training much easier, since it documents the correct way to perform all processes. It ensures that new employees are given all the information needed to perform equally to other operators.

?4. Improves continuous improvement

Kaizen, another Lean principle, is the concept of continuous improvement. Standardized work provides a basis for Kaizen. Indeed, it is only possible to evaluate improvements objectively when existing procedures are standardized and documented. As standards improve, the new standard for Kaizen becomes the basis for further improvements: improving standardized work is a never-ending process. When operators perform tasks differently, it becomes more difficult to notice the 8 wastes of Lean Manufacturing in operations. In other words, it is easier to find opportunities for improvements when processes are consistent.

?6 steps to apply for standardized work

1. Collect data on your current operations

The first step is to establish your work sequence and Takt time. Through IoT connected tools and cloud computing, modern manufacturers can collect data and measure Takt time automatically. Metrics such as cycle time and step time per operator are recorded consistently. Manufacturers gain real-time visibility into their operations, meaning they know exactly how tasks are currently executed.

2. Notice variations and issues

Often there are several ways to perform a task, but only one of these ways uses resources–materials, machines, and operators–in the most efficient way possible. Look at the data you have collected, and notice variations. Are there workers that perform the same tasks, but the output varies greatly? Are some operators taking longer than Takt time? Could some tasks be combined? Where are safety or quality issues occurring ?

?3. Find the most efficient way to run your operations

This is where you want to use Lean tools to optimize your work sequence and procedures. For example, you could use value stream mapping to identify non-value adding steps or poka-yoke to mistake-proof your processes. Your goal is to find methods that are practical, useful to everyone, and free of difficulty.

?4. Document everything

There are many ways you can go about doing this. One of the simplest ways is in digital work instructions. Digital work instructions can be created with a manufacturing app. Media-rich and interactive, they guide operators through processes step by step. Digital work instructions ensure that operators follow each and every step properly, according to the current best practice outlined by your standardized work. More importantly, digital work instructions can be modified in just a few clicks. Therefore, as your standardized work evolves, you can easily keep it documented and up-to-date.

5. Adapt your training programs

It is important that employees understand the new standard procedures and adhere to them. This might require re-training current workers. Furthermore, you want to make sure that your new operator training programs are based on your standardized work. Similar to digital work instructions, digital training modules can be built in manufacturing apps and modified easily. Through videos, images, and other multimedia resources, new employees can self-guide their way through your most recent standardized procedures.

6. Continuously improve the standard

?A common mistake is to think that after establishing standardized work, you are done. Instead, you should constantly strive to further improve the standard. Once standardized work is implemented, it becomes a lot easier to identify abnormalities and issues. Perform root-cause analysis for every problem that occurs, and create a new standard that solves the problem. Standardized work is never perfect or final. It represents a current best practice that should be challenged on a daily basis with Kaizen.

Five S

5S is probably the most well-known Lean Tool and is often the first implemented when a company starts their lean journey. It is simply a way of providing you with a workplace that is clutter free and organized in a way that provides for efficient, safe and ergonomic working. Typical efficiency gains of 10% to 30% are usually realized through an implementation of this tool, often without having any major expenditure. It is known as 5S because of the 5 stages that all start with S in Japanese:

Seiri or Sort.

Seiton or Straighten.

Seiso or Sweep.

Seiketsu or Standardize.

Shitsuke or Sustain.

TPM – Total Productive Maintenance

Having machines and processes that you can rely on is vital for any business. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a fully inclusive approach to maintenance that seeks to prevent any issues from occurring in the first place. It builds on the principles of preventative maintenance and uses the skills and knowledge of those that actually operate the processes and machines and does not simply rely on engineers and fitters. To find out more about TPM just click this link: Total Productive Maintenance.

6 Big Losses

Within any TPM implementation you must understand the reasons for any loss of your productivity. This is defined through looking at the 6 big losses:

Breakdowns of your machines and processes

Setups: this planned down time of the process due to changeovers and setups

Stoppages: these are the short stoppages that are made due to minor issues

Reduced speed: running at less than the design speed for the process

Defects: these are the scrap or defective parts that may be turned out by the process

Setup Scrap: these are the defective parts produced when setting up the process

OEE

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is the measure used within TPM to measure a processes’ overall availability, performance and quality. It is a composite measure made up through measuring each of the 6 big losses and can be used to direct your problem solving initiatives.

Gemba

This is the “real place” in Japanese and within Lean we mean the actual place in which value is created in our work processes. Unless a manager or engineer actually visits the place in which the work is being done and questions the process it will be impossible to fully understand and improve it. It is important that all take the time to observe and question the processes at the Gemba.

Visual Management – Visual Workplace

You should aim to implement the visual factory; this is one in which it is obvious at a glance as to how things work and flow. It ensures clear communication of information within the workplace as well as highlighting in an obvious manner if something abnormal has occurred.

Andon

Andon lights or flags are signals that are used within the workplace to highlight when something abnormal has occurred such as a machine breakdown. A red light and even a siren could be used to call immediate attention to the issue for action by the responsible persons. They ensure real time communication of issues and an immediate response.

Muda – 7 Wastes of Lean

Muda within lean is defined as any activity or process that does not add value. You must understand what they are if you are to be able to eliminate them from your processes. These are generally characterized through the 7 wastes of lean (remember using the simple acronym – TIMWOOD):

Transport

Inventory

Motion

Waiting

Over-Processing

Overproduction

Defects

In addition you may also consider:

Waste of talent

Waste or resources

Waste of by-products

Mura – Unevenness

Mura is the waste of unevenness or inconsistency within what we do. This manifests as uneven work demand that may drive the creation of Muda with regards to inventory and overproduction. It places unfair demand on both employees and the processes themselves and is one of the root causes of waste within your processes.

Muri – Overburden

Muri is overburdened by your processes and employees and again drives the creation of Muda. Muri is unnecessary stress that is caused by poor instructions, lack of training, and inappropriate tools to name just a few causes.

Added Value

Value needs to be understood if you are to drive out waste from your business. It can be defined as something that your customer will be happy to be paid for with regard to your product or service. If they would be unhappy to pay for it then it has no value and should be driven out.

Kaizen

Kaizen is “Change for the better” and is seen as the lean process for continual improvement of all that we do. It is not correcting issues when they occur but seeking to actually improve our processes to make them more efficient and to prevent any possibility of defects. This is a team process usually led by supervisory staff to make steady incremental improvements to quality and performance.

Kaikaku

This is a kaizen breakthrough event that is run to make a significant improvement to a process within a short space of time. Unlike standard kaizen which seeks to make incremental improvements the event approach is designed to make a major impact on how a process performs. Typically it will be performed by a multifunctional team, including people from the target area. They will focus on the area with no need to worry about other day to day tasks.

7 Quality tools

There are seven quality tools that have been traditionally used to help with data collection and problem solving, although many more have been added over the years. These include all of the following:

Tally Sheets

Histograms

Pareto diagrams

Ishikawa or Fishbone Diagrams

Process Control Charts

Process Mapping

Brainstorming

5 Whys

PDCA

Just in Time – JIT

Just in Time production is one of the main pillars of Lean manufacturing. It is the principle of producing what the customer wants, in the quantity that they require, when they want it, and where they want it, without delays or waste. It specifically seeks to remove inventory from your processes.

Inventory Reduction

Inventory driven by overproduction is often by far the worst waste in your business, as well as tying up a significant amount of cash. It prevents us from being able to provide our customers products through Just in Time. Reduction of our inventory is vital to being able to make improvements in our processes.

Continuous flow – Single piece flow

The ideal process is one in which product flows one at a time from operation to operation without delays or stocks between any operations. By implementing continual flow you will immediately highlight any issues within the process as well as reducing the need to hold high levels of work in progress stock.

Pull System

In traditional manufacturing, demand is forecast and batches of product are pushed through the production processes. This leads to large levels of stocks and work in progress as well as the potential of producing product that will never be ordered. With pull production you take from production what the customer orders only and it is built on demand.

Kanban Systems

Kanban is how many companies, such as Toyota, control their pull production. Typical Kanbans are cards, containers or even physical spaces within the factory. Production only takes place when there are containers, spaces or cards that signal that the part should be made. Typically goods are taken from the end of the line which signals earlier processes through the Kanban to produce more.

Cellular Manufacturing

A traditional manufacturing plant has its machines arranged in “silos”. They will have for instance a welding area, a moulding area, a machining area, and so forth. Large batches of materials are then moved from silo to silo. Cellular manufacturing however seeks to place all of the required processes and tools within one working call dedicated to a single product or family of products. This self-contained cell then can produce those products from start to finish using a simple pull system.

Takt Time

Takt is the “beat of the drum” by which your processes should operate. It is the average time in which you need to complete a product. The Takt time dictates the rate at which each process within your company should operate to avoid bottlenecks and over production of components and finished goods.

Product Family Analysis

This is a study undertaken to identify which products utilize which processes within the company. It is used to identify products that can be grouped as families as they share similar process flows. This enables you to set up cells and lines that will be suitable for a family of products.

Inventory Reduction

One of the biggest of the seven wastes if Over-Production and the resulting Inventory. Excessive inventory masks many problems within your processes and can cause you to tie up vast amounts of your cash. To achieve continual flow and pull production these inventory levels must be reduced to the absolute minimum possible.

Heijunka

Heijunka is the process of levelling the workload within the company to remove the waste of Mura or unevenness. We seek to ensure that the whole of your production process will operate at the Takt time of the business. Heijunka (pronounced hey-june-kuh) is a Japanese word that means leveling. In Lean, it refers to the leveling of production, aimed at improving the flow of a process to better match customer demand, reduce waste, and decrease or quit batch processing.

?It forms the foundation of Lean, or the Toyota Production System, along with the concept of standardized work, and Kaizen. In the application of the Heijunka technique, customer demand is met through smaller batches, standardized work, and/or single-minute exchange of die (SMED).

?Why does the leveling of production matter?

The focus of Lean is the reduction of waste and improved value to the customer. Mura - one of the forms of waste (muda) - comes from the Japanese word for unevenness. For example, in software development, there is a phenomenon known as the death march. It’s where, after slow and relaxed project beginnings, most work is crammed into the end project stages, during which team members are just expected to do overtime. An almost planned flow unevenness like this is simply unsustainable for the team and unhealthy for the business.

?There are several reasons for unevenness in production:

• Different activities take different amounts of time to perform
• Different products take different activities and times to complete
• Different people and different machines have different capacities, working and setup times
• People tend to deprioritize the tasks they do not like doing, which pushes some items off their anticipated completion date
• Customer orders don’t typically come in an ordered, logical fashion
• A temporary material shortage might force deviating from the production schedule.

Production leveling by volume and type

Production teams, and most teams in general, tend to think that there is nothing wrong with the way they are working and that customers will simply receive their orders when they are ready. But Lean seeks to reduce the lead time, improve quality and value to the customer at all times. Lean thinking takes from the Kanban method, meaning that items are not built to forecast for future demand, but are produced only when customers order them. This way, production teams will never be working on products that won’t sell.

Traditional manufacturing has long lead times due to waste in the process, but above all, due to long material delivery times with sometimes unpredictable delays. It makes it challenging to accurately anticipate product demand, required for material ordering, while still keeping low stock - tying up as little capital as possible. Machines also take time to produce items, and before they do, they need to be set up, so a considerable amount of time may pass before they’re ready to work. Therefore, production controllers tend to manufacture articles in batches, minimizing the need for machine retooling with each product change.

Volume production leveling deals with containing the number of items produced in each batch while leveling by type adds different sequences of what product is being done in every batch.

?How to achieve a Heijunka flow?

Heijunka is not an easy state to achieve and it does need a company to persist on its Lean journey. A leveled production is often associated with a mature Lean implementation and it often comes about together with the following practices:

• Single minute exchange of die
• Small batch sizes
• Kanban production system aligned with customer demand and driven by the customer-facing team
• Knowing your customer

To achieve Heijunka, a company should do the following:

Step 1: Standardize work

Attempting to standardize work is a simple first step to know how and where to improve it. Through the process, teams will understand how to differentiate between internal and external work, learn to practice the assigned operating procedures, and handle errors correctly.

?Step 2: Work on improving the takt time

A Lean company executes work according to the customer’s takt time and must understand when clients need their product. The production team should then use Kanban not only for the work required but also for the materials required according to the customer’s orders.

At Toyota, the production department is subject to the purchasing department controlling the materials issued, based on customer demand. The takt time is the customer’s buying rate, and matching this to your production will reduce waste. This kind of leveling is considered one of the highest achievements in Lean.

?Step 3: Sequencing

Work should be sequenced to ensure many small batches as opposed to one large volume and to execute order delivery in the same sequence that it was placed in. At Toyota, the ordering of materials and production of goods is aligned with the principle of Just-In-Time (JIT) - items are simply delivered to customers when they need it.

?The process of standardizing work also includes the standardization and optimization of the system’s ability to rapidly change tools and refocus (SMED), which makes efficient sequencing possible. For the company from our above example, their work organization only makes sense if production can switch between manufacturing circles, triangles, and squares without significant additional effort. That’s why minimizing set-up times is so important.

?Establishing Heijunka in your process would give you a competitive advantage by:

• ?Having reduced WIP and an underutilized inventory, meaning a reduction in costs
• Being able to maintain the declared takt time: produce what and how your customers want, when they want it
• Having the ability to better inform suppliers as to when you require materials
• Making your staff’s work easier and less stressful.

_______________________________

Yamazumi Boards

A Yamazumi board or chart allows you to visualize all of the time taken within your operations. It is a tool that allows you to “stack up” all of the component times and to balance how long each step in your cells will take. This allows you to achieve the smooth flow required for your processes.

Lead Time Reduction

The time from order to delivery is something that is very important to most customers. Today it is often the company that is able to deliver the quickest that is going to win the order rather than the cheapest. Being able to improve all aspects of your process from the back office processing and design through to your final delivery is vital in reducing your lead times.

SMED – Single Minute Exchange of Die

One of the most valuable tools for reducing the time spent on changeovers or setups is that of Single Minute Exchange of Die or SMED. It literally seeks to ensure that you can change over your processes in less than 10 minutes. Using SMED ensures that processes that once took a day to changeover are done within minutes allowing you to not only to utilize your equipment more effectively but also to reduce batch sizes to a minimum for continual flow.

Jidoka – Built in Quality

Jidoka is the principle of “Built in Quality” or “Quality at Source” and is one of the main pillars of Lean production. Within everything that we do we should seek to ensure that it is done precisely as it should be. Poor quality products or service can sink a company very quickly. Jidoka seeks us to look for ways to ensure that every process can only turn out a conforming product. We aim for “Right First Time” in all that we do.

Taguchi Loss Function

This was developed by Genichi Taguchi who showed that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not simply black and white based on a product being within specifications. The taguchi loss function basically shows us that the chances of a customer being satisfied with a product are higher if the product is within specifications while their chances of being dissatisfied become higher the further away from nominal you become.

Poka Yoke

Poka Yoke is a method of error proofing. Visual inspection is time consuming and often highly ineffective so we use Poka Yoke methods to automatically detect or prevent the creation of defects within our processes. Processes themselves highlight the defects or will not accept them.

Autonomation

Autonomation is a phrase coined within Toyota that means “Automation with a human touch.” They seek to design machines within which repetitive or difficult tasks are automated but the processes themselves are still monitored by human beings. The people only need to intervene when something out of the ordinary has occurred.

Line Stops

One of the first steps in Jidoka is to STOP. If you are producing non-conforming product then you do not just carry on doing so. Personnel are provided the authority to stop the process and even the whole line. This motivates everyone involved to become quickly involved to resolve the issue rather than just building a mountain of scrap or product for later rework.

5 Whys – Root Cause Analysis

Far too often when we “fix” a problem all we do is to deal with one of the symptoms of a bigger underlying issue. We must seek to drive our problem solving to the true root cause of the problem and fix that. Asking “Why” 5 times in a row will often help us to focus on what that root cause may be.

People

People are one of your greatest assets no matter what your business is, and are one of the main pillars of lean. Without their creativity and hard work it will be hard to succeed and to compete in any business.?You must always value and develop your teams to ensure that you get the best from them.

Self-Directed Work Teams

These are teams of individuals within the workplace that have a multitude of different skills. They are empowered to make changes and improvements within their area with a goal to make the processes better and to avoid issues.

Team Building

Management’s role within self-directed work teams is one in which they should be coaching and developing the teams rather than directing their every action.?Their aim should be to build a cohesive team that is able to achieve the goals that are set for them.

Empowerment

A team that has no real control or authority over their work place is unlikely to be able to make the improvements and changes that are required. A team must be given the authority and any necessary funding to be able to truly be effective at what they are doing.

Cross Training

Within any team it is important that members fully understand each other’s roles and in many instances need to be able to undertake those roles. This enables a much higher degree of flexibility from the team allowing them to cover each other’s functions as required as well as enhancing any problem solving and improvement initiatives.

Hoshin Kanri – Policy Deployment

This is about setting overall goals for the business and then deploying and aligning those goals throughout the business. It requires you to take your business strategy and to translate it into objectives that are cascaded down through the business. A review process is then put in place to ensure that these goals are met.

Supplier Relationships

The traditional relationship between an organization and its suppliers is one in which the company wants the lowest possible price and the supplier wants the highest and each will fight and maneuver to try to achieve their goals. Far better that they develop mutual cooperation so that the success of both companies is shared. Often this involves “open book” sourcing and a full sharing of knowledge between the companies.

Value Stream Mapping

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a powerful method to visualize the flows and wastes within your processes. As a tool it can be used to highlight where action is required within the process as well as providing you with a target to aim for through your future state value stream map.

Bottle Neck Analysis

No matter how fast individual machines may be, your overall process will only ever flow as fast as the slowest part of the chain. It is vital to identify and improve the bottlenecks that restrict your flow to improve them if you require a faster flow through the process.

KPI – Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators are metrics that the company uses to provide goals and targets for all aspects of their business. These should be aligned from the top level company strategy through to what should be achieved within individual cells. KPIs have a huge impact over behavior so they should be chosen with care to ensure that you foster the correct behavior within your company.

SMART Goals

Goals need to be written in a way that allows them to be effective. They should be:

Specific: it should be clear as to what the goal refers to.

Measurable: you must be able to know when you have reached the goal.

Achievable: the goal should not be something that can never be reached.

Relevant: it should be something that is important.

Time Limited: it should be clear when the goal should be reached.

Continuous Improvement

You may be the best at what you do today. However, there will always come a time when someone will become better at doing what you do and they have a chance to snatch away your business. You cannot afford to sit still with anything that you do. You must always strive to continually improve all aspects of what you do.

PDCA – PDSA

Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) is the simplest improvement cycle and is often know as either the Deming cycle or the Shewhart cycle after the quality Gurus that invented and pushed its implementation. This is a continual cycle for improvement and should be repeated over and over to ensure that you continuously improve your processes. Also known as PDSA – Plan, Do, Study, Act.

DMAIC

DMAIC is a variation on PDCA introduced through 6 sigma. The steps are:

Define: outline the process, the boundaries for your study and the expectations.

Measure: collect data on the current state of the process.

Analyze: show the gaps between the goal and current performance and identify the causes.

Improve: design and implement solutions to close that gap.

Control: put in place changes that prevent the process slipping back into its old ways.

TQM – Total Quality Management

Total Quality Management puts the focus very much on what the customer wants and how you will achieve it. First implemented within Bell Telephone Laboratories by Walter Shewhart it was taken up by Japanese manufacturers and put to good use to dominate their markets.

A3 Problem Solving

?A3 Problem solving is a technique based around the PDCA cycle where you use a formal template based on a piece of A3 paper to identify and drive improvements or problem solving. This keeps all of the information local and helps to direct and maintain your efforts.