Lean Manufacturing Principles

Category: Food & Drink

What Does ‘Lean Mean? Lean gives the idea of skinny of slim. The word skinny has a negative connotation for a lot of people. The can also be a positive interpretation : ‘ free of burden, healthy, a lot of freedom of movement, muscles, etc.’ With this specific vision in mind, people went looking for techniques that would allow a production system to function faster, cheaper and better. Lean Manufacturing is distinguished by: a minimum changeover time, Just-In-Time (JIT) production, Kan Ban systems, a minimum of supplies and last but not least a “ zero waste attitude with each employee. The Nature of Lean Manufacturing The concept of Lean Manufacturing is a continuation of the mass production system, known in the twenties as the ‘conveyor belt’ of automotive manufacturer Ford. Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyota, two employees of the automotive manufacturer Toyota in Japan, developed Lean manufacturing after the Second World War. Lean Manufacturing became known worldwide thanks to the best seller “The machine that changed the world”, in which aspects leading to the success of the Toyota production system are described. In the eighties Lean Manufacturing also got a base in America. This was partly caused by the co-operation between Toyota and General Motors, who built a factory together. Lean Manufacturing Basics The Lean approach is based on finding efficiencies and removing wasteful steps that don’t add value to the end product. There is no need to reduce quality with lean manufacturing – the cuts are a result of finding better, more efficient ways of accomplishing the same tasks. To find the efficiencies, lean manufacturing adopts a customer-value focus, asking “What is the customer willing to pay for?’ Customers want value, and they’ll pay only if you can meet their needs. They shouldn’t pay for defects, or for the extra cost of having large inventories. In other words, they shouldn’t pay for your waste. Waste is anything that doesn’t add value to the end product.