What is Lean Manufacturing?
Lean manufacturing is a systematic approach to minimizing waste and maximizing productivity by finding and eliminating waste within manufacturing systems. Waste is anything that doesn’t add value that customers are willing to pay for to the final product.
The Toyota production system was the first to use lean manufacturing principles, though the term wasn’t coined until the 1980s. Toyota identified seven types of waste in manufacturing:
- Unnecessary transportation
- Excess inventory
- Unnecessary motion (for people, machinery, or equipment)
- Waiting (inactive workers or equipment)
- Overproduction
- Overprocessing
- Defects
Over the years, an eighth type of waste has been identified: the waste of unused talent or ingenuity.
All types of manufacturers can benefit from lean techniques and take steps to reduce or eliminate waste in each of these eight areas. To manage, track, and optimize their lean manufacturing program, industrial companies will often trust in a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to help.
Examples of Lean Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing methods differ between industries and organizations, but here are just a few examples of how lean manufacturing can improve the quality, flexibility, and productivity on the manufacturing floor:
Removing unnecessary features: Product features can differentiate your product from the competition. But if consumers aren’t willing to pay for those features or don’t care about them, adding them to your products causes waste. Knowing your customer and their needs, wants, and demands can help you streamline your product development and eliminate waste.
Implementing lean maintenance principles: Lean maintenance techniques keep your equipment running more efficiently, ensuring less downtime and maximizing quality and productivity.
Avoiding excess production: Excess production doesn’t add value, but adds storage costs and other costs such as unnecessary equipment wear and tear. Excess production can lead to obsolescence if the inventory isn’t used before a new iteration is available. It also can increase costs when errors in production aren’t found in a timely manner due to product backlog. Manufacturing the right amount of product at the right time is an excellent example of lean manufacturing principles at work.
Keeping inventory as low as possible: Excess parts and raw materials come with storage costs and, for inventory with limited shelf life, such as chemicals, can lead to waste when inventory passes its expiration date without being used. Using inventory management software can help you keep a robust inventory without over or under buying.
Lean Management in Manufacturing
Implementing lean ideas throughout manufacturing plants requires a focus on lean principles across the organization. Lean management involves eliminating waste in management through simplifying processes by removing tasks that don’t add value.
Unnecessary tasks and steps can occur through all areas of the company, including procurement, finance, and marketing, as well as on the production floor. While lean manufacturing focuses on the manufacturing process and all of its many components, lean management takes a larger look at the organization as a whole.
Importance of Lean Manufacturing
While one of the obvious benefits of lean manufacturing is cost reduction, there are many more benefits for the company.
Lean manufacturing systems eliminate waste like over-production, defects, and unnecessary transportation, improving the efficiency and productivity of both equipment and workers by streamlining processes and eliminating activities that don’t add value.
Since lean manufacturing focuses on reducing waste caused by defects, the quality of production increases as processes are continuously examined and corrected where necessary. Improved quality results in a better product, increased customer satisfaction, and reduced returns and warranty claims.
Another benefit of lean manufacturing processes is improved employee engagement and autonomy. Lean manufacturing relies heavily on employee involvement. Each employee is a master of their machine or the processes they are involved in, and taking employees’ thoughts into consideration maximizes their value in the organization. Their value is not just from the work they do, but from their shared knowledge and expertise.
Additional benefits include better relationships with suppliers, improved sustainability, reduced lead time, and greater flexibility to meet changes in demands or market conditions.
Lean Manufacturing Techniques
There are many techniques that can be used to implement and improve lean manufacturing processes. Some of them are:
- Kaizen: Kaizen involves continuous improvements to processes, products, or systems. It encourages employees at all levels to suggest and implement small, positive changes on an ongoing basis.
- 5S Methodology: This consists of five principles – Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. These principles improve processes by organizing the workplace for efficiency and cleanliness.
- Standard Work: Documenting standard work procedures and expectations forms best practices to create baselines for continuous improvement.
- Just-in-Time Production: This technique is a cornerstone for lean manufacturing. It focuses on producing the product or service exactly when it is needed, minimizing capital tied up in unused inventory but still ensuring the ability to meet customer demand.
Lean manufacturing tools such as computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) can collect data, analyze metrics, and streamline processes. The insights generated can help implement lean manufacturing techniques and provide data about the impact of process improvements made.
To learn more about how a CMMS can help your organization become more efficient and productive, book a live product demo.