Lean Manufacturing Systems

A lean manufacturing process is a system that a business uses to produce goods by operating in the opposite manner of mass production by using less of everything. This means the there is less human effort, less investment in equipment, less space required for manufacturing and less time to engineer and develop a new product. The term, lean manufacturing process, is actually a generic expression that is used to describe a generic philosophy of process management. Based to a great degree on the (TPS) Toyota Production System as well as other sources.

The lean manufacturing process gained notoriety for its effectiveness in eliminating the seven wastes of Toyota in an effort to improve customer satisfaction by increasing value. While some view the buzzword, "lean manufacturing process" as a fad or something that will peak then fade out, many experts believe that the process has true merit. It is a powerful cost reduction tool that has quite a few advantages for streamlining tasks, making them as cost efficient and effective as possible. The term was first coined by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones when the term "lean production" appeared in their book "The Machine that Changed the World."

It is important to understand just what lean manufacturing is and how it works. The basic principle involves a never-ending quest to expand and improve the processes. It is a philosophy that endorses eliminating waste in various areas of the organization as well as getting rid of non value adding activities. The value adding activities include the things that a customer is willing to pay money to obtain. What is left is waste and should be purged or reduced. At the very least it should be simplified or integrated. These wastes are often contained in eight categories:

* Overproduction

* Motion

* Inventory

* Defects

* Waiting

* Transportation

* Extra Processing

* Underutilized People

The core of the lean manufacturing process is to make better use of the time that lies between the time the customer order is received until the receipt of payment by making that span more efficient, concise and effective. This practice results in increased productivity, reduced costs, higher employee morale, increased throughput, improved quality and, of course, increased satisfaction.

There are a variety of methods for putting the process of lean manufacturing to work for an organization. Some of these techniques include:

* Value Stream Mapping

* Visual Workplace

* Setup Reduction

* Cellular/Flow Manufacturing

* Pull Systems

* Total Productive Maintenance

There are many more, but these are some of the more popular methods. The one stipulation that is vital is that lean manufacturing processes must be viewed from the perspective of a total system. If that does not happen, the company will wind up diverting all resources and efforts in to the wrong areas. This will cause a halt to the improvement process thus limiting the full realization of the potential benefits. On the other hand if the process is carefully planned and analyzed in the proper format and from the correct system viewpoint, the implementation and improvement will be ongoing and will yield considerable gains.

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