What Is Lean Manufacturing?

What Is Lean Manufacturing? Today, in a highly consumerist society where people strive to acquire more possessions, it is ironic that in manufacturing consumer products, lean is in. The concept of zero-waste does not only circulate among ecological zones, but it also seems. Lean manufacturing is a new buzzword in the industrial world which is rapidly gaining a ubiquitous following. Lean manufacturing is a systematic approach to eliminate waste in the production process to satisfy customers. Waste is anything that a consumer refuses to pay for. The types of waste in a manufacturing system include the following: (a) overproduction or producing more, earlier, or faster than required (b) waiting for machines to process (c) inventory or work in operation because of large lot production or processes with long cycle time (d) unnecessary processing (e) transportation which hardly adds value to products (f) excessive motion of workers, machines, and transport due to inappropriate location of tools and parts (g) making defective products and (h) underutilizing people.

The focus of lean manufacturing is to minimize the consumption of resources that add no value to a product. As such, it is a process-focused production system that minimizes costs, maximizes customer options, and ensures high quality and fast delivery of products and services. The concept of lean manufacturing originated in Japan where, after WWII, it was necessary for manufacturers to develop a new, low-cost manufacturing process. Unlike their western counterparts, Japanese manufacturers needed to build after the war and faced declining human, material, and financial resources. The first leaders to create lean manufacturing systems were Eiji Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno, and Shigeo Shingo of Toyota Motor Company. In the 1990s, the concept of lean manufacturing was popularized in the U.S. by a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the movement of mass production toward the more streamlined Japanese production style as described in the book entitled The Machine That Changed the World (Womack, Jones & Ross). This depicted essential elements which are used in lean manufacturing systems. The term lean was adopted because these methods used less human effort, capital investment, production space, materials, and time in all operation stages. All U.S. manufacturing businesses eventually applied lean manufacturing because of competition among U.S. and Japanese automakers over the last two decades. Lean manufacturing systems recognize the fact that the value of a product is defined solely by the customer. Customers' needs must be met at a specific time and price. The nitty-gritty of product operations is of no importance to customers.

This realization forces companies to comprehensively analyze business processes. To apply lean manufacturing is to understand the basic activities required to produce a particular product and to optimize the entire process from the point of view of the customer. This is important as it helps identify activities that clearly add value, those that have no value-added and cannot be avoided, and those that have no value-added and can be scrapped altogether. Transitioning to a lean manufacturing system does not happen overnight. Lean manufacturing requires every level of organization to have a complete understanding of its basic principles and execution processes. Widespread orientations must be set up to prepare and motivate people and to make them understand the need to switch to lean manufacturing. After that, a mentality of continuous improvement is necessary to reach company goals. This means that the company aims for incremental improvement of products, and processes over time. For this, employee involvement and an atmosphere of experimentation are essential. Decision-making and system development must be delegated. Willingness to take risks must be encouraged. Improvements must be measured according to results vis-vis macro level targets, not on the number of activities undertaken. Because of the complicated nature of lean manufacturing systems, there is a need to execute pilot projects before spreading the culture across the organization.

The number of manufacturers attempting to become lean is increasing fast. Companies that have fully implemented lean manufacturing systems are rare. Although perfection is impossible, it is a goal that lean manufacturers strive for because it helps them be more vigilant of wasteful practices. ABOUT LEAN MANUFACTURING CONCEPTS Mapping the value stream is the stage where waste is identified and improvement areas are suggested.