Lean Manufacturing is described as a set of practices tailored towards ensuring a cost-effective manufacturing process in a company thus; improving customer satisfaction through a more proficient and faster service delivery times.
The theory has been in existence since the 19thcentury and still very much relevant in today’s business world. This concept focuses on perfection in the course of delivering the end result and eliminates all activities that are not necessarily needed in production process. capital, workers, and land which are however scarce should be utilized as judiciously as feasible to achieve a success at the end result.
A lean manufacturing system consistently meets high throughput or service requirements with minimal inventory. The lean manufacturing system consists of numerous vital procedures together with a variety of tactical strategies to accomplishing them.
How Lean achieves this?
The overall goal was centered toward reducing wastes that occurs during the production process. There are several procedures that sum up the philosophy behind Lean Manufacturing ; these are 5S, Cell Setup Reduction, Continuous Process Improvement, Pull Production, Just in time production and Kaizen. All elements employed by Lean Manufacturing amalgamate into one unit called Lean System.
The following are the key principles of lean manufacturing:
- Value Streams: Let customers pull value through the enterprise by knowing what they really want then produce to meet real requirement.
- Stretch for Perfection: Go after perfection by continually identifying and getting rid of non-value-added activities from all.
- Employee involvement: Engage employees in regularly improvement and problem-solving pursuits.
- Quick Implementation: Employ a swift plan-do-check-act improvement structure to achieve results fast.
- Efficiency Measurement: Employ metrics and swift performance response to upgrade real-time decision-making and problem-solving.
- Organizational Tactic: Approach advancement routines from completely point of view.
Thus, lean manufacturing systems provide good investments, not just automating but also for adequately implementing the lean manufacturing initiatives.
Who can implement Lean techniques?
Lean systems impact procedures that are mission critical to a company – production processes. It is crucial that business owners allow only professionals who have working knowledge and experience in Lean strategies to implement them on the manufacturing processes.
Whenever you find out your business is battling wastage especially in short production process and long production times, the processes would require instantaneous improvement and lean techniques is regarded as the suitable technique. In a case where the resources to implement lean techniques is not available; a Lean Manufacturing consultants would of help or train your resources using the simulation tools or a training program.
This helps in producing a flawless product since the workers are the closest persons to the product and make a difference in ensuring the quality of it. Apparently, lean manufacturing is all about doing all the right things to support productivity and profitability while cutting off the unwanted waste and cost factors.
Timely production of the product as per the customer specifications will surely increase the customer satisfaction levels. The uncontroversial benefit of Lean system is getting a competitive cost advantages from all production process.