Lean Manufacturing

Lean Manufacturing stands out as the single most

powerful and practical improvement solution today for
manufacturing and job shops. Lean manufacturing
delivers quick results and achieves long term goals.
The front line employees love this strategy because
the tools and techniques are easy to learn and once
implemented, promote a smooth collaborative cultural
change. Employees are the ones delivering change,
not management, so the solutions are designed and
implemented by staffs that serve the customers. This
direct and empowered team approach puts it miles
apart from any other strategy and eliminates the
“months to train” and “loss of momentum”.

What is Lean?

Lean is a unified, comprehensive set of

philosophies, rules, guidelines, tools and
techniques for eliminating muda, the Japanese
word for waste. The concept and first
deployments of the lean manufacturing came
from Toyota Motor Car Company.

The key principles of lean include:

• Voice of customer
• Value-Stream Mapping
• Continuous Improvement
• Elimination of waste everywhere, including
o Defects
o Over Production
o Waiting
o Transportation
o Inventory
o Motion
o Excessive Processing
Toyota Production System House

Though Lean concepts have come from the automobile industry, they have been applied
successfully in a number of industry sectors including, Aerospace, Military, Healthcare, Job
shops, Manufacturing, Accounting and more recently in Education.

One way of defining Lean is producing value (a product or a service) with less of everything
(inventory, human effort, equipment and tools, plant floor, design and development, total
cost etc) to maximize the profit, while delivering a product of highest quality when the
customer needs it in the quantity needed.

The focus then is on seeing and eliminating the waste from all the aspects of the job. It
means a commitment to minimize the total cost (a waste-free operation) while offering a
product or service that is focused on your customer's success.

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Ph: 64 21 173 1060 Email: info@solutions4productivity.com
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To achieve the lowest cost you will have to simplify and improve continually all the
processes and relationships in an environment of trust, respect and full employee
involvement.

Toyota developed a manufacturing model based on three pillars:

- Just-In-Time Production (JIT)

- Build in Quality (Jidoka)
- Respect for People

If we analyse these concepts, they mean a balanced approach to manufacturing, focused on

the customer (JIT), the business (Quality, therefore cost) and the employees (people
producing value).

The foundation upon which the pillars rest is the basic stability of your business. What it
means is that you start with a product or service that can be produced consistently on
equipment that provides the parameters required with a workforce that is knowledgeable
about what they have to do, using proven methodology. It comes down to the 4M (man,
machine, material, method).
Once you have that, you can start improving everything using kaizen / continuous
improvement principles. You can picture it as the roof of the pillar structure.

Why Implement Lean?

To be better than the competition in at least one,

and ideally all, of important dimensions of
Operations- flexibility, innovation, price, quality,
delivery, and service

To Excel in all the fundamentals -- asset

management, product introduction, demand
management, etc

To continuously improve cycle times, operating

margins, asset returns, and customer satisfaction

How to Implement Lean?

• Specify value from the standpoint

of the end customer
Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)
• Identify the value stream and
eliminate waste
Error Proofing Total Productive Maintenance
• Create flow so the product will flow
Continuous Flow Takt Time Production Leveling
smoothly toward the customer Pull /Kanban Quick Changeovers POUS
• Create pull - Produce only what is Value Teams Standardised Work Quality at Source
needed when requested Stream Mapping Plant Layout 5S Visual Systems
• Pursue perfection through
continuous improvement Lean Tool Kit

The Operational Excellence series will be continued with articles on various concepts, tools
and techniques used to improve business processes.

This article is brought to you by Vishnu Rayapeddi, Principal Consultant & Director of
Productivity Solutions Limited based in Auckland. Visit www.solutions4productivity.com for
further information.

PO Box 24499 Royal Oak Auckland

Ph: 64 21 173 1060 Email: info@solutions4productivity.com
Visit our Website: www.solutions4productivity.com