LEAN

Lean – aka Toyota Production System (TPS) – was invented by Taiichi Ohno and evolved at Toyota over the last 50 years

Its goal is to eliminate waste and continuously improve productivity in every area of work, including customer relations, product design, supplier networks and factory management

Wikipedia says Lean aims ‘to produce less low-value human effort, less inventory, less time to develop products, and become highly responsive to customer demand while producing top quality, error-proofed products in the most efficient and economical manner’

There are five principles which define the Lean process:

• Provide what the customer wants, defect free

• Provide what’s required on demand, exactly as requested

• Provide an immediate response to problems or required changes

• Provide what’s required with a minimum of waste

• Provide what’s required safely, both for the customer and the supplier

Lean is said to address seven deadly wastes:

• Overproduction – production getting ahead of demand

• Transportation – moving things unnecessarily

• Waiting – for the next production step

• Inventory – when not being processed

• Motion – moving more than necessary to complete a process

• Over-processing – due to poor tool or product design

• Defects – the effort involved in inspecting for or fixing defects

Lean seeks to improve the flow (smoothness) of work by production levelling:

• UK car manufacturers used to forecast demand, make to stock, sell what was in stock and then deliver as best they could

• By contrast, Toyota total up their actual demand, turn their output volume controls to suit, meet all the variety demanded and deliver fast

However, Lean practitioners tend to focus on cutting specific task times and costs – and that could even increase overall costs – if many of those tasks are unnecessary for the customer, cutting their costs by 10% say would make little sense

Hence, always focus on why and how you do things for customers, and the Order Cycle Time (OCT) – big cost reductions tend to follow when you improve things for customers first